


Let the Future Come into Each Moment

by saramir



Category: Bandom, Empires, Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Band Fic, First Time, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-02
Updated: 2010-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:41:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saramir/pseuds/saramir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Spencer turns thirty, Jon is even more affectionate toward him than usual, and Ryan & Brendon are writing (and arguing about) a plant-themed album. Set on tour, 2017, after a failed album and failed relationships, all while the four of them have stuck together, and then some.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Future Come into Each Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thismuchmore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thismuchmore/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Everyone belongs to themselves. This is only my (now jossed) imagining of their future.
> 
> Author's Notes: Originally written in March 2009, pre-divorce. Title from Mason Jennings's song "Be Here Now." This fic was written for thismuchmore, and beta'd by herself, nova33, and infinitenights.

Over the years, they've compiled lists on scraps of paper and strands of memory: What would the band call themselves now if they could take back the name Panic at the Disco? They'd never actually pull a Prince or a Puff Daddy and change their name entirely, but what if?

 

In July 2017, the four of them release _The Past's Future Possibilities_, their sixth studio album. _Rolling Stone_ has judged it as "a valiant attempt to be historically and politically conscious from a band who obviously is neither," and _Alternative Press_ calls them "geniuses, in that they would have to be a certain type of brilliant in order to so swiftly alienate this many fans with a single album."

 

On their consequent summer tour, Ryan begins introducing the band by a different name each night they go on stage. Impulsive and pissed off about critics, one night in Louisiana when they step onstage, he surprises the rest of them by announcing, "Good evening, ladies and gents of New Orleans. We are The Magical Fax Machines, and this is a new song we're working on about moss."

 

Jon laughs so hard he misses playing the entire first verse, which is supposed to be only bass and vocals, so it turns into Brendon singing a cappella while making funny faces at Jon and trying not to laugh.

 

Spencer bursts out laughing so abruptly that he falls off his stool and can't sit back at his kit and properly play until Brendon has already made it through the second chorus.

 

*

 

Spencer's not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the past few weeks of their sparse North American tour, they've started building on material for their next album.

 

Jon keeps joking that it's going to be a concept album -- about _plants_, of all things.

 

Actually, they're already tossing around the title _Tripping the Wasted Vine_, from a line in one of Ryan's new songs about invasive plant species of Southern Appalachia. He's been filling up entire notebooks with lyrics about the flora in every location they pass through, buying books from the Local Interest sections of every bookshop he can find on the road, books with titles like _Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of Our Common Natives_ and _Plant Life of Kentucky: An Illustrated Guide to the Vascular Flora_.

 

If Ryan hadn't always been a bit eccentric, Spencer might be questioning his sanity right now. As it is, he just wonders why the hell Ryan's suddenly turned to learning about plants as therapy or whatever.

 

"Somebody's gotta speak for them," Ryan says, hunched over his laptop in the back lounge of their bus, when Spencer finally asks what's up with the plant obsession. "They're _dying_, duh."

 

"Dude. Really? Please tell me we're not going to have an entire album of songs from the point of view of, like, daisies or something." Spencer stares at him, jaw dropped slightly in an incredulous expression.

 

Ryan just stares back at him. After a long silence, he says, "Well, not daisies," then turns back to his laptop.

 

Spencer covers his face with his hands and groans into his palms. "Look," he says, dropping his hands. "Just because we tried speaking for--" He flutters a hand about, trying to figure out the phrase he's looking for. "--The People, or whatever, and it didn't really work--"

 

"No. It didn't," Ryan says curtly, keeping his eyes on the computer screen.

 

Spencer pauses and just looks at him for a moment, bony shoulders beneath a thread-bare brown sweater, hair cut short and curling a little behind his ears, and face more tired than Spencer's seen in a long time.

 

"Okay," he concedes slowly. "If that's what you're writing, then that's what we'll try."

 

Ryan types something into his computer and doesn't respond, but Spencer can see the slight shift in his shoulders, the breath that relaxes them.

 

*

 

The next morning, they're driving northeast through Mississippi.

 

Spencer's been trying to sleep in, but Brendon keeps singing a rough version of a song he and Jon have been writing called "Heliotrope Blues." Spencer's pretty sure it's rooted in Ryan's work-in-progress about seasonal depression and immortal sunflowers, and Brendon's running through it for at least the seventh time today.

 

After two more verses, Spencer hears Brendon wander past his bunk and into the back lounge, munching on cereal and humming the chorus for, hopefully, the last time today. (If it's already getting on Spencer's nerves, they're really going to have to rework that melody.)

 

Spencer can't fall back asleep so he slides out of bed and heads to the bus kitchen, where he finds Jon and Ryan, immersed in newspapers at the small table. Grunting a hello to them, he reaches into the refrigerator to start some breakfast but scrunches his nose at what he finds instead.

 

"Jon, you left crumbs in the butter container again." Spencer holds out the plastic tub as evidence and props a hand on his cocked hip.

 

"Sorry, Mom," Ryan deadpans from behind his newspaper.

 

"Just for you, Spence." Jon winks and makes a little salute to Spencer with his buttered slice of toast, before biting into it and grinning around the mouthful.

 

Spencer feels his face soften, unguarded this soon after waking up, and for a moment forgets what he was annoyed about.

 

Jon keeps grinning at him, a few crumbs left on his lips. Spencer quickly ducks back behind the refrigerator door, putting the butter back and pretending to look for something else. "Just, you know," he mutters, "try not to-- yeah."

 

"Sure thing," Jon says and slurps at his coffee.

 

Ryan coughs into his newspaper.

 

(This little domestic exchange reminds Spencer too much of whenever he and Haley used to share his house back in Vegas: morning kisses over coffee; spats about rotting apples in the refrigerator and whose turn it was to do the dishes; attempting complex recipes together, laughing and bumping elbows as they kneaded dough or stirred in spices; bickering over what was cooler -- the way cold water from the faucet hisses against a hot pan or the way butter and sugar fluff together with a whisk.

 

That is, until a couple years ago, when Haley had said gently, "We've had an amazing go of it, Spence," her cool palm cupping his scruffy cheek as she'd clarified, "but that's just it -- we're not _going_ anywhere like this."

 

She'd always been so blunt; it had been one of the things he'd loved about her, but right then he'd sort of wanted her to shut down and close off from the world just like he'd felt like doing. He hated how goddamn _right_ she'd been and still was: In the long run, Spencer has never been able to put anything else before his band.

 

He's starting to admit to himself that Jon maybe, sort of, probably has a lot to do with that fact.)

 

"Uh, Spence? Is the fridge really that fascinating?" Ryan taps the top of Spencer's head with a spoon and raises an eyebrow when Spencer startles, accidentally rattling the bottles in the refrigerator door.

 

"Um. I'm just." He spirals a hand in front of him. "Spacing out. Half-asleep, you know?"

 

Ryan glances over at Jon, who's sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and is attempting today's crossword puzzle, and then turns back to Spencer, eyebrow still raised. "Right," he says flatly.

 

"Leave it, Ry," Spencer says, teeth suddenly clenched, his body set for a fight. He slams shut the refrigerator door.

 

Ryan just holds up his hands, dropping his eyebrow back to normal and backing away toward the bunks.

 

"What's a four letter word for 'Like the surface of Mars'?" Jon asks, still focused on the crossword.

 

Spencer makes himself relax a little by laughing, short and sudden. "Um . . . rock?"

 

Jon squints his eyes for a moment then pencils it in. "Huh. That might work."

 

*

 

It's been almost thirteen years since that day when Jon was nothing more than that hot tech guy Spencer had literally bumped into backstage.

 

Jon had grinned at Spencer and pointed out, "Your fly's undone," and Spencer had blushed, laughing awkwardly and zipping up his jeans. He'd mumbled an "uh, thanks," but as he hurried off to find the rest of his band, Jon had called, "Hey! I like that shade of purple!" and Spencer had wanted to die a little. This hot guy had just seen his pair of lavender briefs, and Spencer had to be ready to play drums onstage in forty minutes and, okay, performing in front of an audience? Just wasn't feeling any less terrifying yet, no matter how much he enjoyed it and-- what the hell, _where the fuck was his band_?

 

It wasn't until three nights later that Spencer had been properly introduced to Jon.

 

Spencer had been sitting on the bottom step to their tour bus, bundled in his favorite fluffy white winter coat and texting responses to his sisters' questions about "the exciting life of a rock star" (_everybody stinks all the time and i miss my own bed and mom's cooking_), when he'd been interrupted by Brendon appearing out of nowhere at his side.

 

"Compadre!" Brendon had his arms wrapped around the neck of none other than the person who Spencer, secretly, had been referring to as Hot Tech Guy.

 

"Jon Walker, personal chauffeur and magician, meet Spencer Smith, confidante and upstanding gentleman," Brendon announced with the dignified air of someone who is trying to speak like a sophisticated person but is actually about five drinks past stupidly, astoundingly drunk.

 

And then he vomited onto one of the bus tires.

 

Jon patted Brendon's sweaty back, while Spencer held his own head in his hands and reminded himself that at least Ryan wasn't awake to witness this. (He and Ryan still weren't drinking back then and were beginning to grow tired of how many nights Brendon was spending on The Academy Is... bus, refusing to learn his body's own limits.)

 

"Um," Jon had said, one arm supporting Brendon's waist. "Spencer, right?"

 

Spencer raised his head at the sound of his name spoken in this guy's subtle lisp, and when his gaze met Jon's, he felt something suddenly twist in his stomach. "Yeah?"

 

(There was nothing particularly special about the moment, nothing unlike how his hormones had reacted to dozens of other people, male and female, since the first time he'd started noticing people in that way years before. Spencer has never believed in love-at-first-sight -- or revisionist history, for that matter -- so he didn't magically know that he and Jon would eventually grow closer than Spencer had ever thought he could be with someone who wasn't Ryan.

 

The way he remembers it now, Spencer was just homesick and tired from that night's show and wanted to make sure all of his bandmates were safely tucked away on their bus, not dying of alcohol poisoning somewhere. He didn't have time to get a crush on some tech who he was sure wouldn't even be in his life once the tour ended.)

 

"You wanna help me get this lightweight to bed?" Jon had said, smiling crookedly at Spencer over the knot of his blue scarf, and after a moment Spencer realized he was smiling right back.

 

Jon smiled sort of goofily at him for a second longer and then ducked under Brendon's arm, holding it firmly in place around his shoulders, and Spencer stood to help keep Brendon upright, too.

 

"'m fine, what're you-- hey! Not flat! Not flat!" Brendon was protesting as Jon tried to walk them up the stairs. Spencer stood behind them and clenched one hand around Brendon's hip and the other on one shoulder.

 

"Stairs. Stairs," Jon warned with each step up. "Stairs. St-- whoa." He tipped backward and Spencer quickly shifted his hand from Brendon's shoulder to Jon's back, holding them both up.

 

"Thanks." Jon laughed a little and dragged himself and Brendon up the last step into the bus, turning around to grin that same sort of lopsided smile at Spencer that made him immediately grin back.

 

"Blind leading the blind," Spencer teased.

 

"I hold my liquor just fine," Jon said, bumping into a wall, as Brendon mumbled something about feeling a lot better since he barfed.

 

"Uh-huh," Spencer said, guiding them by their backs in the direction of the bunks. "C'mon, over here."

 

In the tiny front lounge, Brent was playing _Halo_ with his headphones on but offered an awkward wave when he saw the three of them; Jon waved back, Brendon drew out the word "duuuuude" for way too long, and Spencer just gave a nod of acknowledgment.

 

When they reached the bunks, Spencer could hear the tinny sound of Ryan's music leaking from his headphones and hoped it would block any noise Brendon still might make. Fortunately, when Spencer pointed out Brendon's bunk and Jon deposited him there, Brendon seemed content to stay put and relatively quiet.

 

"Mmph," he told his pillow upon impact, belly-down and swimming his limbs around for a bit. Then he turned his face away from the pillow, pulled his iPod out from beneath a pile of socks and bags of candy in the corner, and flailed his arm out in the vicinity of Jon's crotch, saying, "Hey, Jon, find me my song, 'kay?"

 

"Sure, buddy." Jon took the iPod and started scrolling through it as if he knew exactly what Brendon meant.

 

"Check under the artist name Classical," Spencer told him, struggling to pull off Brendon's bright red quilted coat and stuffing it into the bottom corner of the bunk. He crossed his arms against his chest and leaned his head against the frame of his own top bunk. "He just compiled a bunch of orchestral scores into one MP3 called 'Rad Sleeping Jams.'"

 

Jon nodded, smirking fondly down at Brendon, then turned back to the iPod and burst out laughing. "Dude, Bden, you have _so much Cher_ on here."

 

"I believe in life after love," Brendon sang, off-key and off-lyric.

 

Spencer snorted, but when Jon burst into giggles, he had to fight back another damn smile.

 

He grabbed the iPod from Jon and pushed play on the correct song. "Don't choke yourself with the cord in your sleep, moron," he muttered to Brendon, hooking one of the earbuds into his ear as Brendon mumbled something unintelligible into his own knuckles, fingers curled at his stubbly chin. Rolling his eyes, Spencer tucked the iPod underneath Brendon's pillow.

 

(And isn't that weird, thinking back on the littlest things like that: after a few years of living with Apple's new gadgets -- their handheld iScreen digital televisions and portable iPhotos with built-in printers and iPods remarketed as iSongs -- Spencer has grown accustomed to music players the size of a quarter that he can just snap onto a shirt collar or bag strap and listen to the music with safe, cordless earbuds.)

 

"Well, I'm gonna head back to The Academy's bus," Jon said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the opposite direction of the entrance.

 

Spencer lifted an eyebrow. "You need any help?"

 

"Nah, I'm good." Jon tugged on his scarf and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "See you around?"

 

"Well, yeah," Spencer said. "I mean, you're a tech, so."

 

"Gotta have somebody around to remind you to zip your pants," Jon said, nodding.

 

Jon didn't seem to realize how that could be misinterpreted as more than an allusion to when they'd met backstage earlier that week, because as Spencer felt his cheeks grow warm and his eyes widen, Jon just reached across a sleeping Brendon to pull up a blanket over him, then straightened up and smiled a "g'night" to Spencer.

 

(The way Spencer remembers it now, Jon had smelled more like winter than booze as he'd brushed past Spencer, and the way his fading blue jeans stretched tightly across his thighs was more than a little distracting as Spencer turned to watch him leave.

 

But, really, those final details could have been part of a number of nights on that tour. Spencer doesn't expect his memory to distinguish between Jon walking away from the bunks to find his way to TAI's bus and Jon walking away from the bunks to find his way to some instant hot cocoa in the front of Panic's bus. Either way, already, Spencer was a little bit stupid about him.)

 

*

 

August heat in a long Georgia evening, and Spencer's stuck in a tour bus with broken air conditioning and bored bandmates. He wants to stop for sweet tea, but their driver keeps insisting that they won't make it to Asheville in time for soundcheck the next day if they stop for tea _again_.

 

Honestly, Spencer just needs to get off the bus for a while. Ryan's in his bunk absorbed in books on lady slipper flowers and fourth-wave feminist theory, and Spencer's trying to watch _Friends_ on Nick at Nite via his iScreen and it's one of the Smelly Cat episodes, seriously, but Jon's sitting right next to him on the couch, texting with someone, and he's been singing this lame, triumphant tune under his breath all evening:

 

"Five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred, Em-pire!"

 

Every once in a while, on the last syllable, Jon does little jazz hands at his knees in an attempt to make Brendon smile where he's curled up moping about something on the floor. He's got the new PS6 game console set up, and he's killing alien creatures on the screen with a vengeance, muttering something about _stupid fucking plants, really, Ross_ while he does it.

 

If Jon sings the goddamn thing one more time, Spencer's going to grab Jon's hands and clap them over his mouth. Or just kiss that stupid mouth already. Catch Jon's lips mid-number, and maybe their teeth would knock together at first and it'd hurt and feel awkward and Brendon would be right there which would be _weird_, but Jon would stop being obnoxious for one minute _and_ Spencer would, maybe, finally feel Jon's tongue in his mouth, so it would be a win all around, right?

 

He wants to blame the heat, he really does.

 

"What is that anyway? Like, some phone number that Luciani came up with for the band's fan club?" Spencer finally blurts out.

 

Jon cracks up in the middle of the two eights. "No, no, it has nothing to do with Empires. It was a commercial jingle, but oh my god, I'm totally telling Tom you thought that, he'll get a kick out of it." He turns back to his phone and starts typing another message.

 

Spencer raises an eyebrow. "Well, then what was it a commercial for?"

 

"Oh, it was for a carpet store."

 

"You remember the jingle," Spencer says slowly, "for a carpet store. What, was your family big on rug shopping?"

 

Jon chuckles. "No, seriously, ask any kid who grew up in Chicagoland in the nineties and they'll probably tell you that they knew the number to Empire Carpet better than they knew their own home phone. It was just that catchy and on _all the time_, you know?"

 

"Um. Okay." Spencer turns back to _Friends_ for a moment then looks back up at Jon. "Actually, I think that commercial went national eventually. I sort of remember it now that you've repeated it five _million_ times."

 

Jon nods and hums it again.

 

Spencer narrows his eyes, but Jon doesn't notice. He's turned to look out the window at all the kudzu vines and wisteria and whatever else Spencer supposes Jon's photo-eye can see in the headlights' fleeting glow.

 

*

 

The next morning, while they're driving through North Carolina, Spencer, Jon, and Brendon sit in the back lounge and make a game out of watching dozens more trees pass by their windows, most of their branches suffocated by blankets of green kudzu.

 

"That one looks like a dinosaur." Spencer points out a kudzu-covered tree they're approaching that has a neck sloped like a brontosaurus.

 

"That one's a wizard," Brendon announces.

 

"How does it look like a wizard?" Jon stands up on the couch and presses his nose against the window for a closer look as they drive past it.

 

"You know, its pointy hat."

 

"Oh," Jon says, one hand warm on Spencer's shoulder for balance as he crouches and plops back down onto the cushion, practically in Spencer's lap. "I thought that was a unicorn."

 

"But it's green," Brendon points out.

 

"Yeah, so?" Spencer quirks an eyebrow. One of Jon's legs has landed on top of his own, knee bent over Spencer's thigh.

 

"Unicorns aren't green." Brendon states it as hard fact.

 

"Oh and wizards are?" Spencer says, and Jon begins smoothing sections of Spencer's hair between his fingers, wrist warm against the nape of Spencer's neck.

 

"Obviously it's a Slytherin." Brendon rolls his eyes.

 

"Oh, okay." Jon nods.

 

"Yeah." Brendon nods back.

 

"Oh hey, look, Bren!" Spencer turns his head out of Jon's grasp and points out the window. "Look what we just drove past!"

 

"What, where?" Brendon scrambles up to crane his neck ineffectively against the glass.

 

"Your sanity." Spencer presses his lips into a thin line. He feels Jon comb his fingers into his hair again, trailing lazy mazes across his scalp.

 

Brendon turns back to Spencer and narrows his eyes. "Funny."

 

"Not really," Jon says thoughtfully, and then adds, "Panda bear," with a tap of his finger against the windowpane.

 

"How can you tell it's a panda bear and not, like, a grizzly or something?" Brendon slips off the couch onto the floor and starts fiddling with the fraying ends of Spencer's jeans.

 

"Trust me. It's a panda bear," Jon says, then drops his forehead against Spencer's ear. His nose feels weirdly cold on Spencer's neck but his breaths are warm and slow.

 

Spencer hears a sudden squawk from the bunk area, and then Ryan's voice: "Who the fuck stole all of my weed?"

 

*

 

"Welcome to our show, Asheville," Ryan's deep voice announces to the crowd. "We're Ma Papa, and this is a song we're working on about carnivorous plants."

 

Several tours back, they'd stopped making set lists and just started going with what felt right; sometimes that means works-in-progress, sometimes songs they've been playing for years. It makes things more interesting for all of them and has started a small cult following of fans who like that improvisational aspect of the shows.

 

("Just like The Grateful Dead!" Brendon had said after the first tour they'd tried that way, and Spencer had rolled his eyes and pointed out, "Actually, no, this is nothing like The Dead, shut up and quit hogging the pipe.")

 

Ryan is wearing his sunglasses, the giant red ones that cover half his face; the ones Keltie gave him, like, nine birthdays ago -- or, rather, one birthday before they split up.

 

Lately, Spencer's been noticing how his life's been based too much in mathematics: how many years ago did they write that one song that people still ask about in interviews (five); how many hours has he slept in the hours that have passed since the last hotel stop (seventeen out of seventy-two); how many minutes ago did he last think about wanting to press Jon up against the dressing room mirror and lick the familiar taste of popcorn and weed out of his mouth (eight).

 

He hears Brendon reach the end of the first verse -- Spencer's cue -- and shakes himself out of his thoughts, back into what he does best: he counts off, and begins to bang the shit out of his kit, holding together the reassuring chorus of the three people he's most certain of in this world.

 

*

 

After the show that night, Brendon and Ryan crash in their respective bunks as soon as they board the bus, but Jon and Spencer somehow end up side by side on the couch in the back lounge, watching _This Is Spinal Tap_ for the zillionth time, with their feet propped up on Brendon's battered accordion case. They're sitting so close that whenever Jon laughs, Spencer can feel it vibrate throughout his own body, tingling a little when it reaches his white-socked toes.

 

"So," Jon prompts, after they've been watching the movie and quoting aloud favorite lines for a while. He wiggles his bare toes against Spencer's foot. "You'll be thirty next week."

 

"I don't want to talk about it." Spencer knocks Jon's foot back with his heel.

 

"Aw, Spence, it's not actually as bad as everyone makes it out to be." Jon drops his head to Spencer's shoulder. "At least you'll always be the youngest in the band."

 

Which, yeah, okay, Spencer thinks, while that's technically a fact, it doesn't really feel true: Spencer has always been an older brother, a protective best friend, and -- ever since they started the band, half a lifetime ago -- he's been a businessman of sorts, the one who takes care of his guys and stays up-to-date with Karl (their no-nonsense security guard who replaced Zack once he married and settled down with a baby girl a couple years back) and helps discover new bands to mentor. Sure, he's still an utterly immature _boy_ sometimes, playing video games all night with Brendon or wrestling in the grass with Ryan. Usually, though, Spencer feels like he's been acting older than his age for most of his life, so a truly illogical part of his brain has been piping up lately with, _Thirty? Really? Didn't that already happen?_

 

He shares this last part with Jon, eyes fixed on the screen as the movie band wanders a maze of dim corridors. "I mean," he adds, eyes dropping from the screen to his lap. "I'm not _worried_ about it. I just--" He rubs his palms back and forth against his knees, the denim worn almost all the way through. "Well, I guess it's sort of that existential bullshit that Ryan went through last year but you and Brendon sort of breezed past when you guys turned thirty?"

 

Jon is silent for a long moment. Spencer can feel him swallow, the muscles at his jaw and temple shifting against Spencer's shoulder.

 

"Nothing happens all at once," Jon says quietly, and his index finger starts tapping a slow, even rhythm on Spencer's kneecap.

 

Spencer's hands flex against his own thighs. "Did you smoke up when I wasn't looking?" he jokes, but there's something rough in his voice when he tries it.

 

Jon pinches his hip, hard. "_No_, I just mean, like-- nothing really changes that wasn't already changing," Jon goes on, and Spencer can hear a tinge of frustration in his voice as he starts and stalls his sentences, unsure of how to articulate his thoughts. "It's just a number and-- You know, fuck what people expect of your age, that's--"

 

"Really unlike me," Spencer mumbles.

 

"_Yeah_," Jon insists, and stops tapping in favor of squeezing Spencer's kneecap and humming, "Not old enough for history books, just old enough for fishing hooks."

 

Spencer bursts out laughing and shrugs Jon's head off his shoulder so he can see his face. "Isn't that something Ryan wrote?"

 

Jon smirks over at him. "Totally the chorus to that weird disco-country song he and Brendon tried writing last summer."

 

"Man, that song _sucked_," Spencer says, shaking his head and turns back to the movie.

 

Jon chuckles and knocks Spencer's foot with his own again.

 

They watch the rest of the movie, all the familiar scenes, without any more interruptions, apart from their laughter and Jon's poor imitation of a British accent on the occasional line quote.

 

By the time the credits roll, Spencer is half-asleep against Jon's shoulder, a heavy weight against his side, and Jon has tipped his head to rest against Spencer's. The easy breaths through his nose across Spencer's hair are a ticklish reassurance that he's not asleep yet either; if he were, he'd be snoring, this light little wheeze that Spencer sort of wants to record someday and fit into a song.

 

(Actually, one time, he discussed this with Ryan, who's all for it, although mostly because he thinks it'd be amusing to add "bodily noises" to the list of musical credits following "J. Walker" in the liner notes.)

 

Spencer feels that odd combination of post-show exhaustion and exhilaration, the energy still thrumming beneath his skin but his muscles telling him _no fucking way_ whenever he even considers pulling himself and Jon up off the couch and over the several feet to their bunks.

 

Jon shifts his weight more heavily against Spencer's, balancing them out, and Spencer buries his face in the crook between Jon's neck and collarbone, relaxing even further. It's an awkward angle that he knows will give him a sore neck in the morning, but right now-- well. He's always too comfortable to move away from this; it's not the first time they've slept this way together: dozing off in the back lounge, just the two of them passed out on the couch.

 

Spencer can feel the history of those nights in the sense memory of his skin, of the way their bodies know exactly how to fit together in this position: the cotton of Jon's shirt soft against Spencer's clean-shaven cheek; Spencer's arm curving between the couch and Jon's lower back and Jon's forearm resting against the seam of their thighs pressed hot against each other; their ribcages expanding and contracting at odd intervals until they both begin to slip into sleep and their breaths begin to keep the same time.

 

Falling asleep this close together, Spencer has come to learn that Jon smells a little like hotel soaps, a little like sweat, a little like weed. Beneath all that, though, at this angle where Spencer's face is intimate with the soft skin exposed by Jon's white v-neck shirt; Spencer can detect a trace of something that must be purely Jon. Oddly enough, it reminds Spencer of his mom's homemade bread, rising in the warm kitchen: sharp and soft, full and warm.

 

Which, you know, his mom's baking is not something he wants lingering in the back of his mind while he's also thinking about doing outrageously inappropriate things with Jon's body and his own. Not that he can do those things anyway, but still. There's history and there's want, and those things he feels for Jon always intensify on nights like this, when the world blurs into sleep surrounded by Jon in the closest way he can have him.

 

*

 

One time, years ago, they were doing a meet-and-greet in Baltimore, when this girl who worked for her high school newspaper asked them how they felt about Maryland.

 

Brendon had babbled something about how the state has a special place in their hearts since that's where they wrote most of their first album and, "Well, since we didn't actually end up strangling each other in the process, we can't really hate on it, right?"

 

The girl had made this funny snort-giggle noise and held out a dryer sheet for him to sign, which made Jon burst out laughing and tip in his chair against Spencer's side.

 

The thing is, Spencer kind of forgets where they were when they wrote _Fever_. Of course, logically, he _knows_, but they'd holed themselves up in an apartment and a studio most of the time, so it really could have been almost anywhere. He doesn't remember thinking that Maryland was all that different from Vegas; he just remembers thinking that recording an album was way different from high school. You know, aside from the deadlines and the arguments and the quiet way Ryan would curl up beside him after a particularly shitty day.

 

The thing is, Maryland actually makes Spencer think of Jon. Every time they've stopped in or passed through Maryland over the past seven years, Spencer can't help but remember the day it hit him that his crush on Jon had become way more than just a stupid crush and, wow, that feeling for him? Probably wasn't going to just go away.

 

They'd been on the last leg of a long tour promoting their third album and stopped for breakfast at a Waffle House in Hagerstown one sticky summer morning.

 

Zack was lounging in an adjacent booth, teasing his girlfriend about something over the phone; Brendon was texting with Shane and announcing random updates about Dylan the dog every few minutes; Jon was chatting with their elderly waitress about their dreams of the perfect cup of coffee; and Ryan and Spencer were absently kicking each other's shins beneath the table, while Ryan made his way through two sides of bacon and Spencer downed his third glass of orange juice while texting back and forth with Haley. Their relationship had been going through a rough patch, but ever since Panic's stop in Chicago when Spencer actually got to _be_ with her, they'd been texting and calling each other at all hours of the day.

 

_the dogs keep sleeping on your side of the bed_, she sent, one time zone behind him. _it doesn't smell like you anymore._

 

Spencer's chest clenched, and he felt his face flush as he typed back, _i've been using your shampoo brand. i thought it'd make me miss you less but it really doesn't._

 

_do the guys know how stupidly romantic you actually are?_ Spencer grinned; he knew she must be laughing, face open and affectionate, probably still lying in bed in her pajamas. _get your ass back here soon, mister._

 

_three more weeks_, he typed, and then added, _love you_.

 

_more than anything,_ she replied, but Spencer hadn't responded right away, because at that moment, Jon had started laughing at something their waitress had told him before she walked away, and Spencer had gotten distracted by the sound. He'd lifted his head and it was like one of those stupid slow motion moments in the movies, when the light is bright and perfect and some hit love song starts playing and the guy falls for the girl with only a single look.

 

Except, aside from the perfect light part, Spencer actually had "Gin and Juice" stuck in his head and this was _Jon_ he was looking at; Jon who had quickly risen from Hot Tech Guy to one of Spencer's best friends to an integral part of Spencer's band to something else entirely over the past few years. Spencer felt something pause inside of him, though, as he watched Jon's lips, the curve of his jaw, the cut of his collarbone across his flimsy red t-shirt, and Spencer (he remembers this more vividly than almost any other moment in his life) thought, _I am so crazy in love with this man,_ and promptly got "Crazy in Love" stuck in his head.

 

A second later, as Jon's laughter turned into a chuckle, the sound rounded and alive in his throat, Jon caught Spencer's eye and winked at him. It was just his usual, _Hi there, you're awesome_ wink, but suddenly it was the sort of affection that made Spencer tilt his head away, feeling himself smile and blush against his will.

 

Until Ryan kicked his shin again, and Spencer's face immediately dropped into a scowl.

 

"What's up with you," Ryan asked, flat and demanding, not even bothering to tilt the last word into a question.

 

"Nothing's up with me," Spencer said, while fucking Beyonce sang, _Got me looking so crazy in love,_ inside his head.

 

"For a minute there, you were all--" Ryan fluttered a hand around and munched on a piece of bacon for a second. "--glowy."

 

"Ross," Brendon piped up, finally setting down his phone and cutting into his short stack in earnest. "Did you just use the word _glowy_?"

 

"Oh my god," Jon was laughing again, "can we please use that word as a lyric somehow?"

 

Brendon turned to Spencer and tried to keep a straight face while he crooned, "Youuu maaake meee feeeel glo-wy and ali-iiive." He started out trying to imitate Aretha Franklin but somehow broke into a weird Steven Tyler impersonation at the end.

 

All four of them cracked up -- although Ryan's laughter also was interspersed with a series of "No, no, no, please no"s aimed at Brendon -- and Spencer stole a bite of Brendon's pancakes, thinking: of _course_ the moment he has an epiphany about being in love with two fucking people at the same time, he isn't allowed to actually _worry_ about it.

 

Well, at least not right that second.

 

*

 

They're due for a show in New York City tomorrow, and Brendon and Ryan have been in the back lounge arguing through their songwriting process all evening.

 

Part of Spencer wants to intervene and tell them to just cool it for a while, put them on time-outs on opposite sides of the bus like the children they sound like right now, but frankly, he's too tired to do anything but go smoke up with Jon right now.

 

"At it again?" Jon passes Spencer the pipe and lighter when he pulls away the curtain and begins to hoist himself up in the top bunk. Jon turns back to his iPhoto. He's facing the curtain at the foot of the mattress, cross-legged in his usual basketball shorts and white undershirt, and he's hunched over in the confined space, hair swishing against the ceiling when he turns his head.

 

"Yeah." Spencer squeezes up against the head of the bunk, knees bent and toes tucked under Jon's knee. He concentrates on the burn in his lungs, the sweet taste in his mouth, then exhales toward the ceiling. "I don't even know what's up with them lately. We've all been working so well together on the past few albums, but now it's like-- Jesus, sometimes it sounds almost as bad as it was when we were teenagers."

 

Jon nods, making a "hmm" sort of noncommittal noise as he keeps his eyes on the photo screen in front of him, and Spencer knows they both suspect exactly what's going on; they just don't want to talk about it, put it out there between them all in spoken words that become real and need to be dealt with.

 

The fact is, Spencer knows that Ryan's been taking the negative criticism harder than any of them, and unfortunately Brendon tends to get the worst of Ryan's frustration; they're "partners in crime" as Jon lovingly refers to them on the days like this when Ryan and Brendon hole up together to write songs, completely forgetting about Jon and Spencer for hours on end. Sure, they still write music together as a band -- plus, usually Jon and Ryan have that habit of making up songs together instead of having actual conversations anyway -- but the past few years, Ryan and Brendon have begun disappearing together more and more often and coming back with new sounds and ideas and attitudes that they wouldn't have discovered with Jon and Spencer there.

 

"Maybe they'll argue themselves out of it if we leave 'em be tonight," Jon says, not taking his eyes away from the photos in front of him.

 

"Or they'll end up _killing each other_," Spencer snaps, flicking the lighter on again.

 

"Nah, they got over that years ago," Jon says easily, bouncing his knee against Spencer's feet.

 

Through the lounge door, Spencer hears Brendon shout something at Ryan about if he were a more violent person he would be strangling them both with a guitar string right now so neither of them would ever have to sing his stupid fucking lyrics about cacti and mirages.

 

"Hey, tell me what you think of these photos," Jon says, acting like he didn't hear anything.

 

"Yours?" Spencer scoots close beside Jon, bending his knees in front of him.

 

"Tom's." Jon holds up the screen in front of them. "He asked me to pick out a few of my favorites."

 

Spencer watches as Jon clicks on a photo of two pairs of bare footprints crowding against each other in the snow. He drags the photo into a folder labeled "tomfest."

 

"The guys are doing another mixed-media show in a couple weeks," Jon explains, as he clicks on another photo. "Y'know, Tom's prints displayed on the walls, Ryan's videos projected on the curtain between the opening band's set and Empires' . . . "

 

Spencer "hmm"s and reaches a hand over to add the current photo to Jon's yes-folder. It's a close-up of a tree stump, the rings in high-contrast and the farther edge bristling with the frayed remains of bark; it's silhouetted against a dusky sky, the rise and fall of the bark like the skyline of an imaginary city.

 

"See, I knew you'd have good taste if I asked you to help out," Jon murmurs, tucking his elbow into the crease of Spencer's own elbow.

 

"What about this one?" Spencer says, clicking on another photo and trying to ignore the way his face heats up a little. "It looks . . . warm."

 

He feels, all of a sudden, really stupid, until Jon says, "I like it," and adds the photo to "tomfest." It's a shot that Tom had framed from behind: Max and Danielle are laughing on a park bench, with the sun setting pinks and oranges across Lake Michigan, all that water stretching far in front of them.

 

Jon opens another photo and laughs, short and surprised, at what appears. Spencer shifts a little closer, not taking his eyes away from the print: it's a black and white shot of Jon, lying on the living room couch in his Chicago duplex and facing away from the camera. He's only wearing a grey pair of sweatpants, and the wide stretch of his back is pale against the dark fabric of the couch, the shadows emphasizing the line of his spine, his shoulder blades, the broad curve of his shoulders hunched inward.

 

Caught up in the intricacies of Jon's stupid back muscles and the way his hair curls a little at the nape of his neck, Spencer takes a second to even notice the other subjects of the photo: Dylan the cat is perched on Jon's hip, one of his paws reaching toward Jon's elbow where it rests against his ribs. The cat looks curious, wondering why Jon won't play with him, as if he thinks his presence is enough to wake up Jon and get him to pay close attention. Clover is asleep, curled up inside the V of Jon's knees.

 

Tipping his temple against Jon's, Spencer tries not to remember last winter, when Dylan was dying of cancer: Jon had called him at odd hours to babble sad updates and random cat memories and listen to Spencer order him to not feel guilty about being on tour for so much of his cats' lives.

 

"This one's my favorite so far," Spencer murmurs, keeping his eyes on the photo.

 

After a moment, Jon says quietly, "I need to call my parents tomorrow and ask them how Clover's doing," and adds the photo to the "tomfest" folder.

 

He's just opened a close-up photo of somebody's hands gripping the railing of a bridge, the blur of cars passing below, when Brendon's face pops up between the slit in the bunk curtains. Spencer hadn't even noticed that the back lounge had grown quiet.

 

"Getting stoned without _me_? What is this band coming to, really?" Brendon complains with a grin that doesn't extend to his eyes. He makes grabby hands at the pipe and lighter that have lain forgotten beside Spencer for the past few minutes.

 

"Um, you guys have fun," Spencer says, inching forward.

 

"Hey, wh-- Spence," Jon says behind him, tugging on a shirt sleeve. "We're not done with Tom's photos."

 

Spencer pauses and turns his head to look at him, mouthing _Ryan_ before tilting his head in the direction of Brendon, who's standing in the aisle, already intent on the inhale.

 

Jon's mouth forms an _oh_ of understanding, and he lets go of Spencer's sleeve.

 

"Sooo, what are we doing up here, dude?" Brendon asks as he climbs up into Jon's bunk, once Spencer's slid out and started walking toward the back lounge.

 

He hasn't really smoked enough for the weed to affect him much beyond an ease beginning to settle in his bones, so when he enters the room, he's preparing himself to give Ryan a good talking-to about Things That Should Not Be Happening When Ryan and Brendon Write Music Together -- except then he actually sees Ryan: his long limbs, which haven't grown less awkward with age, are curled into a fetal position on the couch, with his head propped up on some pillows and a notebook open in front of him. His wrist is bent at an odd angle, scribbling away with a peacock blue pen, and his face is scrunched up to a degree of frustration that Spencer hasn't really seen for a long time.

 

Spencer deflates for a moment, then sets his shoulders and strides over to the couch.

 

"Hey, you're going get a weird cramp writing like that," Spencer says, picking up a book off the floor and using his hip to nudge Ryan's feet off the only open cushion so he can sit down.

 

Ryan kicks Spencer's ribs and twists around so that he's sitting up against the pillows, notebook in his lap and legs stretched across Spencer's thighs. "I don't want to talk," he says, tapping his pen against his wrist and glaring down at his own words.

 

"Talk about what?" Spencer says casually, opening the book he'd picked up and staring down at its pages. "I'm just here to read."

 

"Right." _Tap-taptap-tap-taptap-tap._ "Because you have such a deep interest in Appalachian wildflowers."

 

"Shut up," Spencer says, tone gruff, and thwacks Ryan's ankles with the book. "I'm not the idiot in this room."

 

"Oh, I think there's enough room for us both to be idiots," Ryan mutters.

 

Spencer glares down at a shiny photograph labeled "coral honeysuckle" and does not think about the pale slope of Jon's back or its warmth beneath Spencer's palm. He does not think about how smooth Jon's skin could be beneath his tongue; does not imagine kissing down each ridge of Jon's spine and curling his tongue beneath the tailbone, tasting a different kind of skin.

 

*

 

When they exit the Holland Tunnel, it's storming in Manhattan.

 

Thunder and lightning are fighting on top of all the usual cacophony and neon of the city, and the sky is pouring that weird, cold summer rain that reminds Spencer that autumn is almost here. After two hours in traffic, Jon and Spencer have pulled on hoodies and huddled together in Spencer's bottom bunk while Ryan and Brendon start improvising a blues song on an acoustic guitar across the aisle in Brendon's bunk. Brendon's slouched against the back wall, his feet dangling off the edge, while Ryan lies lengthwise, guitar in his own lap and legs kicked across Brendon's lap.

 

They're not actually talking or looking at each other, despite the point of contact and the musical tinkering. Frankly, Spencer's surprised the two of them are communicating at all right now, considering last night's yelling, but he's not going to question their current civility if he doesn't have to. Especially not today: it's Ryan's thirty-first birthday, and even though awhile back the band made a unanimous decision to stop celebrating their birthdays after twenty-nine, Spencer figured the least they could all do was be decent to each other on their birthdays.

 

"I've got these stones in my soles," Ryan sings, sounding bored and wearing his sunglasses even in their cave-like bunk-space, "and, baby, they ain't gonna wash away."

 

"Got this stone in my soul," Brendon continues, growling a little on the next part, "oh, darlin', it just won't wash away."

 

"Oh honey, I've got these stoned soul blues," Jon joins in, slurring the S's, and Ryan breaks down a blues scale.

 

"Whoa-on this rainin' dreary day," Brendon finishes off.

 

"Stoned soul?" Spencer smirks, bumping Jon with his elbow, as Ryan keeps up the blues riff and Brendon's hands tap out a beat on his knees.

 

Jon turns to Spencer and smiles, tongue stuck out between his teeth and eyes crinkling around the edges. His shoulder is warm through their sleeves, so warm it's distracting in the chill. They're close enough to smell each other's breaths, which should be gross, especially since Jon's smells a little bit like old milk and bananas from breakfast, but Spencer _wants_, and Jon's affection and proximity are certainly not making him want any less.

 

"Knockin' my lyrical skills, Spence?" Jon jokes, bumping Spencer back with his own elbow. He pronounces skills like it starts with a lisp and ends with a 'Z' and Spencer will never stop finding that endearing.

 

Suddenly, Brendon's cracking up over something, and Spencer turns away from his Jon-shaped distraction to see Ryan pluck out a few more bluesy notes and glare at Brendon over the tops of his sunglasses.

 

Brendon just pokes his knee, and Ryan's lips twitch into a smile, but only for a second.

 

*

 

"Thanks for making it here through the storm, New York," Ryan says. "We are Moose Change."

 

"That we are," Jon adds, then glances over his shoulder to catch Spencer's eye so they can crack up together.

 

Brendon straightens up from fiddling with the pages at his piano and shakes the hair out of his eyes. He acts like he hasn't been paying attention. "Okay, Ross, what first?" he says with an air of forced nonchalance that Spencer recognizes immediately.

 

Fuck. Spencer knew it had been a bad idea to leave Brendon and Ryan by themselves while he and Jon shared a joint in the dressing room before the show. The two of them had probably tried writing together again and gotten into yet another of their recent blow-ups.

 

"Should we try one off our new album?" Ryan suggests uncertainly, turning to Spencer instead of Brendon.

 

Spencer just turns to exchange _What the fuck?_ faces with Jon. None of them have had a tense moment on stage in _years_. No matter what was going on anywhere else, they'd become professional enough to not let it affect their shows. At least, that's what Spencer had thought.

 

"Oh yeah, let's," Brendon says, sarcastic, and Jon shoots him a glare. Brendon isn't looking. "Here's a song from _The Past's Future Possibilities,_" he continues. "Ryan and I were thinking of renaming the record _Fuck Off, Critics_, but that doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it, Ry?"

 

Ryan acts like re-tuning his guitar is the most important thing in the world right now.

 

"Um, actually, let's go with an older song," Jon jumps in.

 

"Yeah," Spencer says. "A little bit of, oh, 'Lying' to loosen up?"

 

Let them act like angst-ridden teenagers, he thinks, but at least put it into the show in a productive way.

 

Ryan raises his head and looks over his shoulder.

 

Spencer presses his lips in a thin line and stares back at him, until Ryan nods.

 

Brendon steels his shoulders in his seat at the piano and stands up to return to his center stage mic. "Okay, everybody. Here's a song from our very first record," he says, and dives right into the opening line: _Is it still me that makes you sweat . . . _

 

Instead of singing playfully at Ryan and being as dramatic as possible with the song like he used to when they were teenagers, he stands more or less still, facing the crowd when he starts singing.

 

Jon and Spencer exchange another worried glance after the first time through the chorus, but by the time they get through the second verse, Brendon's loosening up and stalking dramatically toward Ryan as he sings, and Ryan's playing along, letting them release their tensions through music, even if only temporarily.

 

For the rest of the set, they don't mention the new album again. They don't play any of their new works-in-progress either, but for the last song of the night, somebody in the crowd shouts out, "'I Write Sins, Not Tragedies'!"

 

Brendon mutters, "Oh, fuck that shit," but Ryan stubbornly starts plucking the opening notes over and over.

 

"It's my birthday and we'll play what I want to," Ryan jokes, but it sounds just plain _mean_, and he refuses to stop playing the guitar part, so the rest of them are forced to join in.

 

Brendon glares at Ryan the entire time he sings; they haven't played that song on stage in at least four years.

 

*

 

That night, somewhere on a highway in Pennsylvania, Spencer finds his blue Championship Cubs t-shirt that Jon gave him two years ago when the Chicago Cubs had finally won the Series for the first time in one hundred and seven years.

 

Panic had been on tour and made the mistake of scheduling a show in Phoenix that night while the game was on, so Jon had to watch a recording of it afterward. While Brendon and Ryan passed out from what'd been their most draining tour to date, Spencer had stayed awake with Jon in the bus lounge, watching all three extra innings and the game-winning grand slam that made Jon pull Spencer up and do an absolutely ridiculous victory dance with him that ended in Jon grabbing Spencer's face between both hands and kissing the corner of his mouth, firm and quick, a little salty from honest-to-god tears.

 

"Baseball, Spence," Jon had said. "This is _it_." And because Spencer knows Jon, he knew then and knows now that what Jon really meant that night was: "This is what it's like to know we can be _more_."

 

The shirt is wrinkled into a ball at the bottom of one of his suitcases, but Spencer pulls it on anyway, catching a whiff of weed and laundry detergent as it passes over his head.

 

He can hear Brendon and Jon watching some movie loudly in the back lounge, because after the show Brendon looked like he needed to either punch someone or have a major unwinding fest, so Jon bought them a bunch of beer and candy, kept his arm around Brendon's shoulders, and steered them into the lounge with a bunch of their favorite movies.

 

Spencer had been left with an uncommunicative best friend who, at every attempt of discussing Things Wrong With The Band Right Now, grumbled something incoherent and folded in on himself. If Spencer thought he could push, he would, but sometimes Ryan wouldn't even talk to Spencer and that's just the way it was. So, Spencer had sat quietly with him in Ryan's bunk, watching old music videos on their iScreen until Ryan dozed off, purposely not resolving anything that's been going on between him and Brendon.

 

Now, Ryan's snoring in his bunk across the aisle while Spencer crawls into his own bunk. He's too exhausted to join Jon and Brendon in the back, so tries to get some rest instead.

 

This lasts for about ten minutes.

 

"Hometown show tomorrow, Spence!" Jon announces, poking his head through Spencer's curtain. He's holding a can of beer and wearing his old Cubs hat sideways and a pair of Brendon's gigantic purple sunglasses.

 

Spencer snorts at the sight of him and then tucks his face into his pillow away from the burst of light from the corridor.

 

"Hey, you're all prepared for Chicago in that Cubs shirt I gave you," Jon says fondly, then adds, "Dude, the print is already so worn down."

 

Suddenly, he's splaying his fingers across Spencer's soft belly to feel the shirt's fabric, the tip of his pinky curled slightly into the dip of Spencer's bellybutton.

 

Spencer's breath hitches at the touch. He keeps his face hidden in the fluff of his pillow as he swats his hand at Jon's arm to get him to leave.

 

Jon just swats right back. Spencer listens to the clatter of the sunglasses and the empty aluminum can as they drop to the floor, right before Jon climbs into the bunk. Spencer automatically wriggles farther back toward the wall to make room for him, even as he complains that Jon should leave because Spencer is _trying_ to sleep, dammit.

 

"Hey, I sleep, too. Let's sleep together," Jon says, and Spencer just stares at him, waiting for Jon to realize what he just said. After a moment, Jon smirks and rolls his eyes, taking off his hat and dropping it askew on Spencer's head. "I _meant_ let's go to sleep here. My bunk is boring."

 

"It's exactly the same as mine," Spencer says, knocking the hat onto the pillow above him, "just a little higher off the ground. And it smells different."

 

"Yeah, which is exactly why I like yours better," Jon mumbles, and Spencer can smell the beer and pretzels on his breath as he scoots forward to share Spencer's pillow. His hand has returned to its spot on Spencer's stomach, although it's shifted to a different angle: the hem of the shirt is riding up a little and the tip of Jon's middle finger is warm against Spencer's bare skin.

 

"What?" Spencer says, and feels his pulse begin to quicken.

 

"Yeah," Jon says, as if that makes any sense, and then drops his hand down to the mattress and changes the subject. "Hey, Pete texted me earlier. He and Ashlee are throwing a party after the show tomorrow, and Karl says we'll have enough time to drop by for a couple hours before we need to be back on the road."

 

"Oh, cool," Spencer says, waiting for his pulse to slow back to normal, and then actually registers what Jon just said. "Wait. It'd better not be a birthday party."

 

Not only had today been Ryan's birthday, but Spencer will turn thirty in only a few more days.

 

"Nah," Jon says. "I think they just like throwing parties and thought they'd schedule this one for when we're in town."

 

"Well, as long as there's no cake involved."

 

"Like you'd refuse cake," Jon teases and drapes one arm across Spencer's back, curling his other hand between the pillow and his own cheek.

 

"Oh, fine," Spencer says, beginning to grin, "you know me too well."

 

"Damn right," Jon mumbles, eyes drooping shut, and Spencer tentatively slides an arm around Jon, hand landing on the small of his back, while his other hand curls uselessly in the space between them.

 

Spencer closes his eyes and tries telling himself that this is no different than falling asleep with Ryan or Brendon. Unfortunately, he's been trying to tell himself that for years, and Spencer has never been a very convincing liar.

 

They fall asleep with Spencer's ankle hooked over Jon's, and their faces only a few inches apart, breaths soft and slow against each other's lips.

 

*

 

"It's 7:03, Chicago, and we are Very Beautiful Dragons." Ryan hums a bit of an old Irish dirge and begins to strum the opening chords of one of their older songs. It's one of, like, thirty that Ryan wrote about the decline and his sabotage of Keltie's and his relationship, years ago; it's the only ballad.

 

Spencer drum-kicks in all the right places but mostly keeps returning his attention to Jon, who's smiling serenely out over his hometown audience, wiggling his bare toes against the wood-paneled stage and lazily plucking away at his maroon bass.

 

Ryan is hunched over his own guitar, like he always does on this song, while Brendon sits cross-legged on the stage with his microphone, singing familiar stories about coyotes calling out in the canyon and scratching out messages in the rock-face, about tip-toeing circles around sediment and holding breaths beneath the soil.

 

Spencer carefully crescendos a cymbal roll, watching the blur of drumsticks and shimmering vibrations beneath the amber stage lights.

 

When he looks back up, Jon has turned his smile toward Spencer, his back sweating to the audience and eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Still, Spencer knows that smile, knows that it's the sort to reach Jon's eyes, make the corners crinkle with barely-contained joy. Spencer has seen that smile hundreds of times, aimed at hundreds of people, including Spencer himself.

 

There is absolutely no reason why it should make Spencer blush, after all these years.

 

Still, if Spencer feels his face grow warmer as he turns his attention back to his kit, he can blame it on the lack of air conditioning in this damn club.

 

*

 

Spencer had almost forgotten how cool the nights can get near Lake Michigan. Even in summertime, sipping his third glass of wine, he's still wearing a hoodie, grey and holey. (Actually, it might be Jon's hoodie; the two of them have been mixing up their clothing for so long it's difficult to tell whose is whose anymore.)

 

"Trust me, I know it's disheartening," Patrick's telling him, "getting all that negative feedback from fans and critics. But, dude, I'm really looking forward to what comes next from you guys. I mean, this sort of backlash . . . I have a feeling it's going to fuel some really unique art, you know?"

 

Patrick looks and sounds so earnest that Spencer can't help but just nod awkwardly and take a long sip of his wine instead of venting any worries about the state of his band.

 

For the past hour or so, the two of them have been sitting on folding chairs in Pete's screened-in porch, drinking chardonnay and talking music, while about a half dozen little kids play on the other part of the porch.

 

Pete and Ashlee's party has turned out to consist of a bunch of old and young Chicago scene folks milling around a bonfire in their backyard.

 

("Ash and I do this every week in the summer," he'd insisted when Spencer had demanded to know if there was a birthday cake hidden anywhere. "It's got nothing to do with you and Ross becoming old men.")

 

When Panic had arrived, Patrick had already been sitting on the porch, keeping an eye on the kids there, and Spencer had felt like just kicking back and chatting with someone who wasn't part of his own band, so he'd joined him. Besides, he's not thrilled about all the mosquitoes that are surely lying in wait for him outside.

 

Currently, two kids who Spencer doesn't recognize are cheating at an old game of Battleship that must be at least as old as Ashlee, while Pete's five-year-old daughter Zoe and Joe's four-year-old son Matt are testing out how many clothespins they can fit on Joe's six-year-old son Jacob's curly head of hair; Spencer thinks they're up to at least thirty-seven by now.

 

"Anyway." Patrick coughs and readjusts his hat. He's wearing a brown fedora that says _worlds BEST unkle_ on it in sparkly pink puff-paint; he'd told Spencer that Zoe decorated it for him a few weeks ago and it's become his favorite hat. (Spencer is now wearing a bracelet made out of uncooked macaroni noodles that Zoe colored green and purple with markers earlier in the night and presented to him with a blush, before she'd run away giggling something about "the beard man" to Matt and Jacob.) "How are you guys holding up on this tour? I hear Ryan's been messing with the crowd a little bit. Name changes, huh?"

 

Spencer cracks a smile and glances out the window, seeking out Ryan. Instead, he sees Jon and Tom. The two of them have barely left each other's sides since Tom arrived, huddled together beside the bonfire and laughing uproariously. Right now they're roasting long skewers of marshmallows with one hand and passing a bottle of Jack Daniel's with the other. Spencer's smile falters a bit as he turns back to Patrick. Before he can say anything, though, the backdoor creaks open.

 

"Uncle Patrick?" Pete's eight-year-old son is peeking through the doorway, holding the neck of an acoustic guitar in one hand. "I can't figure out how to play this Cars song. Can you teach me the chords?"

 

"Absolutely, kiddo." Patrick sets aside his empty glass and stands up to follow Bronx back into the house, but he pauses in the doorway and turns back around. "Hey, Spencer?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

Patrick's face is a little pink from the wine as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, but he meets Spencer's gaze straight-on as he says, "I don't mean to pry or anything, really. I mean, your band, your business, but." He shrugs. "If you want a new producer or just an outside ear or something, you know where to find me, okay?"

 

Spencer's smile returns full force this time. "Sure thing, man. I'll definitely keep that in mind."

 

Patrick nods a little half-smile at him then quickly turns to go help out Bronx.

 

Spencer finishes off his glass of wine, watching with amusement as one of the kids carefully piles all of his little pegged battleships on top of each other at the start of a new game.

 

A moment later, Pete bursts into the porch, screen door slapping shut behind him.

 

"Okay, little dudes and ladies," he announces, arms spread, "it's way past bedtime!"

 

All of the kids respond with a discordant whine.

 

Pete rolls his eyes. "Come on, come on, toothbrushes in the downstairs bathroom, sleeping bags in the den. You know the drill." He pauses and winks at Spencer, then raises his voice a little. "I'll continue last week's vampire story if you're ready in ten minutes!"

 

"Yay!" one of the kids exclaims, and the kids playing Battleship immediately shove the game back into its box and rush into the house. Zoe and Matt are quick to follow, leaving Jacob standing alone in the middle of the room, dozens of clothespins dangling from his head.

 

Pete does a double-take, then bends over with laughter. "Aw, Jake, dude, how many this time?"

 

"Forty-three," he says proudly.

 

Pete exchanges grins with Spencer over Jacob's head, then gives the kid a high-five. "Awesome. Now let's go inside and I'll help you take them out."

 

"Okay, Uncle Peter," Jacob says and takes Pete's hand as they walk toward the back door.

 

Pete nods at Spencer as he passes. "By the way, Walker's been wondering where you are. You should get out there and consume obscene amounts of s'mores and alcohol with him."

 

"Oh, um," Spencer says to an empty porch as the back door shuts behind Pete. "Okay."

 

When he steps out of the porch, he finds a can of bug spray sitting on a shelf by the door and squeezes his eyes shut as he sprays himself thoroughly with it. Once he's covered in a mosquito-repellant cloud, he drops the can to the grass and starts to walk toward the bonfire. Coughing through the bug spray, the rest of the air is filled with the scent of burning wood and cigarettes, plus the trill of cicadas mingling with the few traffic noises in this suburb just outside of the city.

 

"There you are!" Jon has one arm draped around Tom's shoulders and secures his other around Spencer's as he takes a seat on their log-bench near the bonfire.

 

"I was only over there talking with Patrick," Spencer mumbles.

 

He's startled when Jon presses a too-wet kiss to his temple.

 

"You're my favorite," Jon says to him, and Spencer can smell the whiskey, can see the half-empty bottle nestled in the grass beside Jon's and Tom's bare toes, so it doesn't surprise him when Jon turns to Tom and kisses his temple as well, tells him, "and so are you." He squeezes both of them closer to him, and Spencer and Tom exchange fond eye-rolls over Jon's head.

 

"Hey, d'you know what Brendon and Ryan are up to?" Spencer asks them.

 

"You smell like summer camp" is Jon's not-answer.

 

Spencer elbow-jabs him. "Goddamn mosquitoes gotta die."

 

"You show 'em, Spence," Jon slurs a little more then usual, nodding his head into Spencer's neck. He rests his bearded cheek there and drops his arm from Spencer's shoulders, wrapping it around his waist instead. His hand is warm where it rests on Spencer's hip, and he slips his forefinger against the skin between Spencer's jeans and top, begins thumbing the hem of the t-shirt.

 

Spencer sits very still.

 

"Oh, I don't know about Brendon," Tom speaks up, and Spencer remembers he'd asked a question just a moment ago, "but Ryan and Sean are being book nerds over here." Tom picks up the Jack Daniel's bottle and tips it toward another log-bench that's angled around the bonfire on the other side of him.

 

Spencer turns his head to look, trying to ignore the rasp of Jon's beard against his skin: Ryan's hands are carefully illustrating something in the air as he clarifies some specific vampire mythology to Sean, who's nodding intently.

 

"Sean just read _Dracula_ for the first time this week," Tom explains, obvious affection in his tone as he leans in closer to Spencer and Jon and adds in a stage-whisper, "and it's all he'll fucking talk about anymore."

 

Sean chucks a bag of marshmallows at Tom, who ducks and lets it hit Jon in the head instead. Spencer cracks up.

 

"Too cushiony, Van Vleet!" Jon tosses the bag back at Sean, but his aim is off and it simply lands in Ryan's lap.

 

Ryan rolls his eyes, opens the bag, and pops a marshmallow into his mouth.

 

"Dude," Spencer says to him, "you're not getting all inspired to make another attempt at a _Dracula_-inspired rock opera again, are you?"

 

Sean looks genuinely intrigued by this news, but Tom bursts out laughing and Jon chuckles into Spencer's shoulder. Spencer leans a little closer to make them both more comfortable.

 

"Hey," Ryan protests, chewing on another marshmallow, "that was _years_ ago."

 

"So not an answer," Spencer points out.

 

Ryan quirks a smile and stares back at him.

 

"First wolves, then vampires . . . how was the next logical step _plants_?" Jon mumbles to Spencer, and Spencer hides his grin in the unwashed mess of hair at the top of Jon's head; it's getting a little long, beginning to curl at the ends.

 

"Wait, did you really try writing _Dracula_ songs?" Spencer hears Sean say to Ryan. "Because I was thinking--"

 

"Sean's totally already written vampire lyrics," Tom tells Ryan, turning away from Jon and Spencer. "I found them in one of his notebooks this morning. . . . "

 

Jon sits up and snags a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from Tom's sweater pocket. His other hand that had been resting on Spencer's hip drags across Spencer's lower back, pausing over Spencer's hand where it's resting on the wooden surface between their thighs.

 

After a moment, he lifts his hand so he can light his cigarette.

 

The back of Spencer's hand tickles a little where he leaves it on the bench.

 

Jon stuffs his free hand into his own hoodie pocket and inhales, plucks the cigarette from his lips, exhales, and ashes onto the grass. He turns to offer Spencer a turn.

 

Spencer shrugs and takes a pull. "Hey," he says, passing it back to Jon, "so where's Brendon anyway? I think if we don't head back to the bus soon, Karl's gonna kick our asses."

 

Jon "hmm"s in agreement. "I saw Bden by the keg with some scene kids a while ago, but I don't--"

 

"Joe and Marie are the _best couple in the universe_," Brendon announces, appearing out of fucking nowhere in front of them. "They've been brewing their own beer and concocting all this other crazy shit, like, seriously, smell how strong this shit is." His hands are wrapped around a ceramic mug with a goose on it, and he shoves it between Jon and Spencer's faces. The smell makes Spencer's nose itch a little. "It's, like, everclear and cider or something and-- and--" He pulls back the mug, closes his eyes, and takes a sip. "Cinnamon! It is so rad, holy shit, this makes me want to, like, lock Joe and Marie in my basement -- well, if I had a basement -- and make them brew things for me _all the time_."

 

Jon's laughing into Spencer's shoulder again and Spencer's fighting down a grin, when somebody near the porch starts blasting some old '90s R&amp;B, prompting Brendon to cut-off his booze-praise mid-sentence ("No, wait, I'm not joking, I'll get you guys some of their beer, it's like--") and exclaim, "Oh my god, I loved this song in middle school!" He starts dancing in that totally retarded way he always has -- focused on hip thrusts and arm flailing (some of his drink spilling onto grass and skin) -- and Spencer has never understood why people find it sexy at all.

 

Except, as some dude on the stereo sings -- about getting an erection while he's dancing too close to a chick? Seriously? -- Brendon spots Ryan on the bench kitty-corner to theirs, passes off his goose mug to Jon (who's laughing even harder now while Spencer can't help but join in), and dances over to him.

 

Ryan is smiling distractedly at Sean and Tom, who are making jabs at each other about which one of them has watched more episodes of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_, and when Brendon shoves himself into Ryan's space, he doesn't even flinch. Brendon's flung an arm around Ryan's neck and is wiggling his hips to the dirty rhythm of the music, but Ryan just acknowledges his presence with a light hand on Brendon's waist and keeps his eyes on Sean and Tom.

 

It isn't until Brendon starts crawling into Ryan's lap that Ryan starts paying attention.

 

"What the-- Brendon?" He raises both eyebrows and tips backward a bit, startled.

 

"Ryan, Ryan, remember this song?" Still trying to dance, Brendon has bent a knee on one side of Ryan's thighs and is trying to slink his way into Ryan's lap. He tries to slide his other knee onto the bench, but off-balances as soon as he does.

 

"Whoa!" he says and wraps both arms around Ryan's neck, at the same time Ryan goes, "Hey, hey, don't fall into the fire," and clutches at the back of Brendon's thighs.

 

This is about the point at which Spencer figures he should probably look away, but with a quick glance at Jon, he realizes he's not the only one watching. So.

 

Ryan's fingers stand out against Brendon's jeans, long slime pale lines tight against the worn dark denim, right below the lower lines of Brendon's ass. Brendon giggles a little and sings a line of the song (_Ooh, we're dancing real close_), which makes Ryan grin and even laugh at first, but then Brendon starts moving again, at this new angle, and Ryan's face changes completely, laughter cutting off abruptly.

 

Brendon's straddling Ryan's thighs and circling his own hips in the air, not creating much friction, but without a doubt suggesting sex. He swivels his hips, one hand drunkenly trailing up and down the back of Ryan's neck and into his hair, while Ryan just stares up at him, eyes wide and dark in the firelight. Ryan's hair is sticking up in back, he's still clutching at Brendon's thighs, and he's biting his bottom lip to stop himself from--

 

Well, Spencer doesn't really want to think about that. He's not exactly sure where all the tension and frustration between those two is coming from these days, but it's sort of obvious how, exactly, they'd like to relieve it.

 

Especially when Brendon inches both of his knees forward, drops his weight all the way down into Ryan's lap, and just _grinds_ there for a moment, watching Ryan's jaw fall slack and his eyes flutter closed. Brendon spreads his fingers flat against the plane of Ryan's chest, begins to slide his hand down, down further, his eyes never leaving Ryan's face, and--

 

The song ends.

 

Ryan blinks his eyes open and shoves Brendon back at arm's length, knuckles clenching around Brendon's shoulders to hold him away but not push him off into the fire.

 

"No," Ryan says, voice leaving no room for argument. "It's time to go."

 

"It's time to daaance!" Brendon insists, playfully drawing out the last word and sliding one hand around Ryan's lower back.

 

"Oh god, you did _not_ just say that," Ryan says with a groan, rolling his eyes skyward, at the same time Jon bursts out laughing, his body nearly curled in half.

 

Spencer shakes his head and watches as Brendon tries to shift closer again, but one of his knees slides off the bench and he wobbles a little. Ryan takes that as an out, twisting himself around Brendon until he's standing. With his hand still on Brendon's shoulders, he turns Brendon around and pushes him down onto the bench, where Brendon lands with a thump and a bout of giggles.

 

"Come back to the bus when you're capable of not drunkenly molesting me, asshat," Ryan scolds, but there's something thick in his voice, and Spencer is familiar with the tense, careful way he's holding himself.

 

Spencer nudges Jon, who's catching his breath beside him. "Go talk with Ryan?" he pleads, when Jon turns to him.

 

Without questioning, Jon squeezes Spencer's knee, stands up to give Tom and Sean a quick group hug, and then jogs after Ryan who's already hurrying away from Pete's backyard.

 

Spencer glances over at Tom and Sean, who are looking a little uncomfortable sitting in the middle of whatever is going down. He opens his mouth to explain, but realizes that he has no idea how. They've had their own shares of band drama, though; he figures they sort of understand.

 

Instead, he awkwardly tells Tom that his photography for the upcoming show rocks and adds to Sean, "Good luck with the _Dracula_ music," which makes Tom and Sean both laugh and get back into a good-natured debate about concept albums, while Spencer stands up to deal with Brendon.

 

He's sitting on the bench where Ryan left him, staring down at his knees, one hand picking at some loose threads where the denim is almost completely worn through.

 

"Brendon," Spencer says, voice stern, but when Brendon looks up at him, he's got the damn puppy-dog eyes. Not the sort he fakes because he knows they'll get him what he wants, but the sort of lost, bewildered expression that he gets when he's let his guard down and is honestly hurt. Spencer sighs. "What the fuck, dude?" he says, his tone much kinder than his words.

 

"I don't--" Brendon looks down again. Picks at the threads a bit more. Looks back up. He seems pretty sober now; the heavier Brendon's drinking gets, the more mood swings he has, although Spencer knows that when he gets to his feet, he'll probably be a wavering mess. "Stupid of me to try anything."

 

Spencer grabs his hand that's picking at the jeans and tugs him up and into the circle of Spencer's arms. "Maybe," he says. "Either way, though, I don't think Ryan's cool with having your first time be a drunk public fuck in Pete's backyard."

 

Brendon puffs out a breath of self-deprecating laughter into the dip of Spencer's collarbone, his breath warm through the fabric of Spencer's (Jon's) hoodie. He fists his hand in Spencer's shirt, knuckles vibrating just barely against Spencer's stomach.

 

"C'mon." Spencer steps beside Brendon, slings an arm around his shoulders, and steers them back to the road.

 

*

 

The next morning, the bus breaks down in Wisconsin, somewhere on a highway between Chicago and the Twin Cities.

 

Nobody's sure how long it'll take before they'll be good to go again, so Spencer steps off the bus to get some fresh air. Down the road he can see billboards advertising fireworks and cheese, one of them with a helpful giant balloon mouse to accompany the cheese. If the bus doesn't get fixed soon, he might have to convince Brendon yet again that he probably doesn't want to buy a Cheesehead hat, since he's not even a Packers fan, and it could give people the wrong impression once they finally arrive in Minnesota, a.k.a. rival territory.

 

Spencer idly starts to wonder when, over a decade and a half of touring, he started picking up all these local tidbits and customs and rivalries throughout the States, but his thoughts are interrupted by Brendon slumping off the bus and slouching against it, his shoulder pressed against Spencer's.

 

It's starting to drizzle but Brendon tries to light a cigarette anyway and starts humming the most gloomy sounding "On the Road Again" Spencer's ever heard. He leans back into Brendon's shoulder and watches the familiar motions of cigarette to lips, while Brendon squints straight ahead. Spencer follows his gaze, off into some desolate farm pasture, giant donuts of hay rolled up at odd intervals toward the horizon.

 

"What happened with Ryan this time?" Spencer asks, thinking about last night, about a line that Brendon had drunkenly crossed when Ryan apparently wasn't prepared for it.

 

The rain begins to pick up. Brendon tosses his cigarette onto the gravel on the side of the road and just continues to hum the road song.

 

"Brendon." Spencer makes his voice a bit more firm. Jon calls it his Papa Smith voice, like someday he'll have to discipline kids or something; Spencer finds this nickname a little creepy, to be honest.

 

"He's just--" Brendon tries to illustrate something with his hands that looks a little bit like bear claws and a little bit like Gabe's old _Fangs Up_ symbol. "Nothing ever changes!"

 

"Sure it does." Spencer tries to ignore the rain, but starts to get distracted by thoughts of his own dry, warm bunk inside the bus.

 

Brendon huffs. "Not _really_, you know? Not here." He bangs a fist against the tin siding of the bus.

 

Spencer sighs, making sure it's as dramatic and put-upon as possible so that Brendon notices how much these arguments tire him. Fights between Ryan and Brendon never get solved without intervention, and Spencer is usually the one who has to intervene. When it comes to making music together, they have been known to fight for what they want and scream until their throats are too sore to sing the rest of the day, but afterward they just seethe quietly and never resolve any of their disagreements unless Spencer or Jon tell them to get over themselves.

 

Stubborn bastards, Spencer thinks. Near the beginning, before Brent had stopped showing up and when they were Jon-less, Ryan and Brendon once went an entire week not speaking to each other, until Spencer figured out that he needed to be the one to push them to fix things.

 

He was barely eighteen then. Sometimes, Spencer tries to imagine how differently the four of them would have grown up if they had done it without each other. As it is, there's a certain amount of staying the same when you're playing music for a living with your three best friends, or at least a certain amount of growing up at the same velocity.

 

"Come on," he says and grabs Brendon's upper arm. "We're confronting whatever this is. Right. Now."

 

"What the fuck, let go of me, jerkass," Brendon protests, trying to pull his arm away but letting himself be dragged back up the bus steps nonetheless. When they get to the back lounge, Brendon's still squirming in Spencer's grasp and pulling Spencer's hair with his other hand like a total loser while Spencer keeps repeating, "Asshole!" and pulling Brendon's hair in retaliation.

 

"The fuck?" somebody else says and finally Spencer looks up and realizes that Ryan is sitting there, as suspected, and Jon is sitting next to him. They both look somewhere between baffled and amused.

 

"Jon, they're still doing it," Spencer says, and then, "Ow, fucker!" to Brendon as he pulls his hair once more. Spencer lets go of him, shoving him when he does. Brendon stumbles a little as he reaches over to pull more hair, but Spencer steps away, crosses his arms, and narrows his eyes first at Brendon, then at Ryan.

 

Brendon stuffs his hands into his tight jean pockets and glares down at the carpet.

 

Ryan pointedly stares down at a book in his lap.

 

Spencer turns back to Jon and clarifies, "They're being passive-aggressive _assholes_." On that last word, his eyes dart between Ryan and Brendon.

 

"Oh, believe me, I've noticed," Jon says and pokes Ryan's cheek, eliciting a bizarre, squeaking sound as Ryan startles and ducks away, jumping up from the cushion and knocking his book to the floor.

 

This brings him face to face with Brendon which, Spencer bets, wasn't exactly what Ryan had planned.

 

"Guys, just scream and get it over with," Jon says with an annoyed twist to his mouth. "We all know by now that maybe we weren't really at the top of our game with that last album, but--"

 

"You're going to fuck up the next album, too!" Brendon shouts, right up in Ryan's face. "With these stupid fucking songs about _plants_, what the _fuck_!"

 

"You said you _liked_ these 'stupid fucking songs about plants,' dickwad!" Ryan shouts back. "You've been writing them _with_ me!"

 

"Yeah, well, sometimes I really fucking hate them! Like-- like when you're being a moody bastard who writes some absolutely _shitty_ lyrics!"

 

"Oh, like you can write any better ones! I wouldn't be such a moody bastard if you weren't such a judgmental _snob_!"

 

"_I'm_ the judgmental one? Are you kidding m--"

 

"You won't take my ideas seriously anymore!"

 

"Because you're not making sense! One day we're fine -- _better_ than fine, even -- and the next day you're spouting some shit about how we need to 'reinvent ourselves' on our next record, as if that's a _new concept_ for us or something, and I just-- I don't know what you _want_ from me anymore, Ryan, I really d--"

 

"I'm terrified that we're going to break up, okay? Fucking god!" Ryan yells, and it's so loud and unexpected, it cuts them into silence.

 

Jon and Spencer exchange startled, worried looks.

 

Brendon scrunches his face up into this messy combination of hurt and frustration and bewilderment, and reaches a tentative hand out to Ryan's shoulder. Ryan lets him.

 

"Hey," Brendon tries, his voice far softer than before. "We're not going to-- I mean, really? Ry, no matter--"

 

"We are fucking stuck together," Jon says to both of them, unfolding himself from the couch to stand beside Spencer. "Right, Spence?"

 

Spencer nods, his throat too tight all of a sudden to say anything. He wants a joint right fucking _now_. He wants, like, Jon's lap to lie in and smoke up and just _be_. He wants something else that isn't this reminder that time is passing, that they're actually at a point in their lives where they might have lost it: that magic or creative drive or whatever that makes them _them_ and loved and happy doing what they do.

 

"But," Ryan says, one arm crossed protectively over his chest and picking at the collar of his shirt, "what about the album? We--"

 

"--were less than awesome," Brendon says with a sneer. "Since when does that make you back down instead of fight harder?"

 

Ryan drops his arm and stands up taller, getting a stubborn look in his eyes.

 

A beat later, he's snagged Brendon's iSong from where it'd been clipped to Brendon's shirt pocket, and run through the bus and out into the rain with it.

 

"What the fuck, dude?" Brendon chases after him. "What are we, _five_? Give it, Ross!"

 

Spencer laughs himself out of his frantic thoughts, hurrying after Jon over to the bus steps. They stand in the doorway and watch as Ryan leads Brendon on a cartoon-like chase, the two of them running in a wide loop around a tree.

 

After a minute, Brendon tackles Ryan into the muddy grass. His iSong has flown a couple feet away from them, but Brendon's not bothering to reach for it, focusing completely on wrestling with Ryan. The rain's pounding down now, and they're soaked already, hair flopping around in thick wet clumps, t-shirts shimmering heavy with rainwater, and mud streaking pale skin where their shirts have scrunched up against their torsos.

 

Ryan tugs on Brendon's hair, cackling a little, and Spencer can see the moment the wrestling stops being a way to express their frustrations and starts being play. Their bodies are contorted in a startlingly sexual way: Ryan's legs spread, knees bent, and Brendon's body pressed lengthwise, tightly between Ryan's thighs. Brendon dips his head down, lips against Ryan's ear and says something that makes Ryan laugh, loud and long, a sound that Spencer can hear clearly back at the bus.

 

Jon nudges Spencer with his elbow, and when Spencer turns his head, he realizes they're both smiling, relieved and affectionate.

 

At another laugh from outside, they both turn to watch Brendon crouching between Ryan's legs, palms curled on each of Ryan's knees as he hoists himself up and offers a hand down to Ryan. Making a show of rolling his eyes, Ryan grabs onto Brendon's wrist and lets himself be pulled up, wavering against each other for a second as they find their footing.

 

From this angle, Spencer can't see Ryan's face anymore, but he certainly sees when Brendon bounces a bit on his toes and quickly kisses Ryan's cheek, before pulling away to pick up his iSong, even though the rain's probably ruined it by now.

 

Brendon walks back to the bus, smiling crookedly and already chattering to Jon about a song idea he just had, but Spencer keeps his eyes on Ryan: his back is straight, shoulders tensed, head tilted down.

 

Spencer feels Jon's arm brush his as he backs farther into the bus, feels Brendon knock past him, too, but Spencer begins to step down the stairs; if he has to physically pull another one of his bandmates back into the bus, then so be it.

 

He pauses on the bottom step, though, when Brendon returns to punch his shoulder and say, "What are you doing, Spence? Get back in here and grab your sticks. We're playing." He then calls out over Spencer's head, "Ryan! Dude, we're all going to go write a song that sounds like rain and highways now!"

 

Ryan's shoulders relax, and he whirls around with a tentative smile forming on his face.

 

"You can write a bridge about dandelions or something," Brendon adds, his voice lilting in a hopeful, "Okay?" after a beat.

 

Ryan's grins for real now, rolling his eyes once again, and jogs back to the bus. Brendon has bounded into the back lounge with Jon, but Spencer waits to walk back up the bus steps with Ryan, slipping one hand against Ryan's rain-cold palm to squeeze a quick reassurance, as much for Ryan as for himself.

 

*

 

"Apologies for the delay, Minneapolis," Ryan drawls. "Our bus broke down on our way to the show, but we made it here despite those Wisconsin pitfalls. We are Wookies on Your Pillow, and--"

 

"And here's a song we wrote today about rain!" Brendon turns away from doing some last-moment tuning on his guitar and beams across the stage at Ryan.

 

Ryan grins back, not taking his eyes off Brendon as he adds, "Just for you, Minnesota."

 

*

 

That night is a hotel night.

 

Spencer and Ryan are resting against a wall of the lobby, shoulder to shoulder and eyes closed, while Karl gets room keys for all of them. Technically, they can afford their own individual rooms, but they always end up hanging out in each other's rooms anyhow, so it makes more sense to just share two per room.

 

"Hey." Jon pokes at Spencer's stomach. Spencer exhales a startled laugh and grabs blindly at Jon's wrist to stop him from doing it again. "Spence, hey, room with me tonight."

 

Spencer opens his eyes to see Jon standing close in front of him. His lips are curved into a small, hopeful smile.

 

"Um," Spencer tries to respond, but Jon's turned his arm in Spencer's grip and is sweeping his fingers absently across the sensitive underside of Spencer's wrist, Jon's blunt nails tickling his skin with each pass.

 

Ryan fakes a cough beside them.

 

"Spencer's rooming with me tonight!" Brendon announces, appearing over Jon's shoulder and waving two keycards in the air. He hands the other two to Jon and Ryan, exchanging what Spencer bets Brendon thinks is a stealthy look with Ryan.

 

"Wait, why aren't you two rooming together?" Jon asks Brendon; the "now that you and Ryan have made up" goes unsaid. His fingers have stopped moving, and Spencer takes the opportunity to let go of Jon's wrist.

 

Brendon laughs easily. "Like we'd want to spend that much time together so soon after our ceasefire," he jokes, elbowing Ryan, who just rolls his eyes and starts walking toward the elevators. Spencer can tell he's smiling though, small and pleased.

 

"I guess I'm rooming with Brendon tonight?" Spencer tells Jon as he shrugs away from the wall.

 

Jon hasn't moved, so they're suddenly way closer than Spencer expected. Jon's looking down at the keycard Brendon handed him, then frowns up at Spencer.

 

"You'll live without me for one night," Spencer tries to tease, but Jon looks genuinely disappointed, and Spencer's not sure where that's coming from right now.

 

"Yeah, but," Jon starts, then shuts his mouth and shakes his head, looking back down at the keycard.

 

The elevator dings open across the lobby, and Spencer gives Jon's sleeve a little tug. "C'mon. Real beds," he reminds Jon, and hurries over to the elevator to join Brendon and Ryan, who are engaged in a good-natured argument over their misheard lyrics from some old pop song that's playing softly in the elevator.

 

"Whatever happened to elevator muzak, anyways?" Brendon interrupts a point Ryan's trying to make about his version of the lyrics. "Or are we just not staying in hotels snazzy enough for that anymore?"

 

Spencer grins at that and tries to exchange a look with Jon as he steps into the elevator beside him, but Jon's not looking; he's too busy nervously twisting and untwisting the hair behind his own ear between his thumb and index finger and chewing on his bottom lip. Spencer's grin fades.

 

He nudges Jon with his hip, and jokes, "You know, we can room together if all of a sudden you're really that scared of rooming with Ryan."

 

"Hey!" Ryan protests from behind him, and Brendon laughs.

 

Cracking a smile, Jon rubs his hand against the back of his neck instead of messing with his hair some more and turns his face toward Spencer's.

 

Spencer catches his eye and bumps their hips again, smiling small and curious at him.

 

The elevator doors ding open again. Before they can say anything else, Ryan wraps his fingers around Jon's arm and steers him toward their room, so Jon just calls over his shoulder, "See you in the morning?"

 

"Duh," Spencer replies, rolling his eyes, but he's smiling back at Jon's hopeful look, as their doors shut behind them.

 

Brendon and Spencer are both disgustingly sweaty, from the show and the stifling heat, and in the five minutes it takes them to drop their bags on the floor, pull off their shoes and socks and damp t-shirts, and order some beer and pizza from room service, the air conditioning has frozen the sweat in their hair.

 

But before either of them can shower, they get distracted by a Discovery Channel documentary about endangered species of insects in the Amazon Rain Forest and end up stuffing themselves with pizza and beer and passing out on the same bed from sheer exhaustion and food-sleepiness.

 

"Spence, hey, c'mon." Spencer can feel Brendon trying to pull the blanket out from under his body. He has no idea how long he's been asleep. "Dude, wake up for a sec. The AC's up way too high, we gotta get under the covers."

 

"Undercover," Spencer mumbles.

 

Brendon chuckles and tugs more insistently on the blanket until Spencer drags himself off the bed. He wobbles his weight from one foot to the other for a moment while Brendon shoves down the bedspread.

 

"Yeah, Spence, go undercover with me," Brendon teases, pulling Spencer back into the bed, arm first, and then clawing at the sheet and blankets until their bodies are covered up to their shoulders.

 

"Mm," Spencer agrees and tangles his legs with Brendon's.

 

They're facing each other on the same pillow, and after a moment Brendon snuggles his face into Spencer's neck. Spencer takes a deep breath and exhales, relaxes into Brendon.

 

He hadn't even realized how much he'd missed this, missed Brendon being all clingy and warm and boyish with him. Even though hotel nights usually meant that Spencer roomed with Ryan by default, back near the beginning of the band, Brendon and Spencer had started to bunk together on the bus whenever they were lonely. On Panic's first tour, they'd spent hours sharing stories about home and their childhoods, and held long, convoluted discussions about all the things they missed about having a relatively normal life and all the things they didn't miss one bit.

 

(That comfort of bunking with Brendon had been a sort of constant in Spencer's touring life, until about six months ago, when he and Brendon accidentally ended up in bed together in a not-quite-platonic way: One night after a long day of recording their last album, the two of them had been at Spencer's house trying to figure out some drum parts, and this had inevitably segued into bitching about the state of the album and doing shots of tequila. After five-maybe-six shots each, Brendon took a giggling body shot off Spencer's neck, and this somehow led to making out for over an hour, until they passed out in a tangle of limbs on Brendon's bed. Just, thank god they'd both been too drunk to get it up, and they couldn't stop laughing about it the next morning, clutching at their hangover headaches the entire time.

 

They've never told anybody else about it, but ever since then, whenever they're with anyone who's drinking tequila, Brendon gets a kick out of biting into a lime wedge and waggling his eyebrows at Spencer, because they always end up falling against each other in a laughing fit that confuses the hell out of Jon and Ryan.

 

In any case, Brendon and Spencer have been sharing a bed less often ever since that night. They're not even really attracted to each other that way, but it's like they're worried that something might happen again anyway, because they're both lonely and easily turned-on and tend to have poor judgment when they drink.)

 

Feeling happy to be at ease like this with him again, Spencer wraps an arm around Brendon's back. His fingers begin scrawling cursive gibberish between Brendon's shoulder blades, knowing that it always soothes them both.

 

"So, tomorrow," Brendon says after so long Spencer had thought he'd fallen asleep.

 

"Tomorrow," Spencer repeats, and writes the word in cursive on Brendon's skin.

 

"You're the last of us to turn the big three-oh," Brendon says cheerfully.

 

"Please don't call it that."

 

"Tres y cero."

 

"I really don't think that's how you say 'thirty' in Spanish."

 

"No, it's treinta, duh. Tienes treinta años." Brendon pauses. "Well, you'll be thirty mañana. I don't know future tense español."

 

Spencer stops writing invisible letters and sighs against the top of Brendon's head.

 

"I didn't really get you anything," Brendon says after a moment. "Just so you're not expecting something, okay?"

 

Spencer shrugs the shoulder that isn't pressed against the mattress. "I don't really need anything, dude. Besides, didn't we all decide we _wouldn't_ make a big deal out of our birthdays anymore?"

 

"Oh shut up, we both know I just suck at presents."

 

Spencer laughs. "You do not."

 

Brendon tilts his head back so they can talk more clearly face to face. "Remember Ryan's thirtieth birthday? I actually got him socks. _Socks_, Spencer." He sounds horrified.

 

"They were dark green with little pineapples on them, man. I'm pretty sure Ryan still loves them."

 

"So not the point."

 

"Which is?"

 

"I suck at creative gifts?"

 

"Whatever, you're over-thinking this whole thing. Just-- like-- dude. The four of us still being a band is more than enough for me right now."

 

Brendon snorts. "Yeah, even though we've lost, like, half our fan-base."

 

"You know that's not true."

 

"Okay, you're right. A third of our fan-base."

 

Spencer smacks the back of Brendon's head.

 

"Hey!"

 

"They don't _hate_ us," Spencer insists. "They just . . . "

 

" . . . don't really like what we're making anymore?" Brendon scrunches his nose. "Dude. All they want us to play is that shit we wrote when we were kids, or shit we wrote when we were twenty-somethings and depressed and breaking up with our dudes and ladies."

 

Spencer frowns. "I guess you're right."

 

"Yeah, well." Brendon presses his face back into Spencer's neck, and they fall silent again.

 

"Ryan's got this really sappy present planned for you," Brendon announces after a while. "Just a head's up. But Jon's being all mysterious and won't tell me what he's getting for you so I couldn't even spoil that for you if I wanted to."

 

"Um, okay?"

 

"Yeah. Just so you know." Brendon burrows his forehead into Spencer's armpit.

 

Spencer moves his hand off Brendon's back and starts carding his fingers through Brendon's hair instead. "You give great presents, Bren," he blurts out.

 

"What're you talkin' 'bout?" Brendon says, voice muffled and tickling Spencer's skin.

 

"I mean, like. Like this. Right here." Spencer chews on his lip and tries to think of how to say thanks without sounding like a total sap. Ah, fuck it. "You always know exactly when I need comfort and shit." He pauses for a beat, then adds, "And when _not_ to include tequila."

 

He can feel Brendon's mouth spread into a smile against his skin as he puffs out a warm laugh. After a moment, Brendon lifts his head up but not away, so he just sort of drags his face up Spencer's neck. "Awesome," he says, lips moving sloppily against Spencer's jaw in a completely disgusting way, all sleep-drool and pizza breath, "but I'm still buying you sunflower seeds and Diet Coke tomorrow at the first rest stop, 'kay?"

 

Spencer huffs a laugh, places his palm flat against Brendon's face and shoves him away. "What riches, pizza-breath," he says, picking at the edge of their blanket and using it to swipe at the tiny bit of drool Brendon left on his jaw.

 

"Hey assface, those are your favorites," Brendon says, laughing and tucking his face into Spencer's neck again.

 

"Yeah, yeah," Spencer says lightly, but he gently tugs Brendon's hair in thanks and Brendon hums sleepily.

 

*

 

When Spencer wakes up the next morning, Brendon is singing random medleys of Sam Cooke and Sublime in the shower (because some things never _do_ change), and somebody's pounding on the door to their hotel room. Actually, it sounds more like the person is _kicking_ the door, what the hell.

 

Spencer stumbles out of bed, eyes half-closed, and opens the door.

 

Ryan's standing there with a cup of coffee in each hand and a package tucked under one arm.

 

"Take," he says and jabs his chin in the direction of the package.

 

Spencer grunts, rubbing at the pillow creases on his cheek with one hand, and takes the package with his other hand.

 

Ryan walks over to the beige armchair in the corner and sits cross-legged on the beige carpet at the foot of it.

 

"Sit," he says, delicately setting down the coffees, and points at the space on the carpet in front of him.

 

Rolling his eyes and scratching at his bare stomach, Spencer sits down across from him, legs spread out in a V with his coffee cup between them.

 

Ryan takes a sip of his own coffee and jerks his chin awkwardly at the package again. "Well?"

 

The shower turns off in the bathroom, and Brendon starts singing some old Radiohead song; Spencer's pretty sure it's the wrong lyrics. "Dude, much as I love our monosyllabic morning conversations--"

 

"Open your damn birthday present, moron," Ryan says and looks back down at his coffee, taking off the cover and blowing on the drink.

 

"Oh." Spencer blinks and looks down at the package again. "Right." Barely awake, he'd sort of forgotten what day it was, even with Brendon reminding him before he'd gone to sleep. It's so easy to let the dates and times blur into one another on tour, which is sort of strange since being on tour is all _about_ needing to be in certain places at certain dates and times, but--

 

Ryan snaps his fingers impatiently in front of Spencer's face, and Spencer startles backward. "Oh! Hey, Ry!" Brendon stops singing for a second to call through the door. Ryan's always had this singular, freakish ability to snap really loudly.

 

"Brendon," Ryan says, barely raising his voice, "did Spencer get stupid in his sleep?"

 

"Spencer, open your present! I told you that Ryan got all sappy just for you!"

 

Ryan glares into his coffee, and Spencer feels himself grin. "Aw, did you make us friendship bracelets or something?" Spencer pokes Ryan's knee with his bare toes.

 

Brendon bursts out of the bathroom, laughing, with a towel wrapped around his waist. "What ever happened to the bracelets Jon and I tried braiding for us a few years ago?"

 

"They got disgusting because you refused to let us take them off, ever," Ryan says. He's smirking, though, so Spencer can tell he's still high off making up with Brendon, who's pulling on a pair of jeans and grinning over his shoulder at Ryan.

 

"Friendship bracelets symbolize friendship, dude. You can't just take them _off_." Brendon attempts an offended expression but mostly just looks like he's trying not to laugh at himself.

 

Ryan does laugh. "Yeah, yeah." He turns back to Spencer, who's just sipping his coffee and smiling sleepily at the two of them. "Happy birthday, old man." He jerks his chin again.

 

"Stop doing that thing with your chin. It looks weird," Spencer says absently as he picks at the tape holding together the wrapping, which is made up of tourist attraction pamphlets from the lobby.

 

"Yeah, birdface," Brendon says, flopping sideways into the armchair above Ryan and ruffling Ryan's already sleep-mussed hair. "Your chin does funny things." He steals Ryan's coffee and takes a long gulp.

 

"Your mom does funny things," Ryan says automatically, and glares up at his coffee cup until Brendon winks and hands it back.

 

"Thanks for the living proof that turning thirty doesn't really make us any more mature," Spencer says, but then he pulls away all the wrapping from Ryan's gift and sees the photograph inside.

 

"Technically, it's from Brendon and Shane," Ryan says after a pause. "You know, Shane shot it and Brendon found it when we were in Vegas last."

 

"But Ryan framed it and thought it'd be a good present, so it's all his idea," Brendon adds, poking Ryan's shoulder. "Do you remember when it's from?"

 

"Yeah," Spencer says softly. He coughs and says a little more clearly. "Um, yeah, I do."

 

It was the first summer all four of them were single at the same time. A couple years back -- god, it must've only been _weeks_ after he and Haley had called it off for good -- Panic had been on a break between touring and going back into the studio and decided to visit Shane while he was shooting an independent feature in San Diego. One day, the five of them had spent all afternoon at the beach, getting baked and sun-sick and laughing 'til they ached all over. Spencer doesn't remember being happy that summer, but he remembers being happy that day for some weird reason.

 

In the photograph, Brendon and Ryan have their arms slung around each other's shoulders, and they're deep into a round of Brendon making goofy faces at Ryan until they both crack up. Brendon's eyes are crinkled at the corners and his tongue's flopped out the side of his mouth, but it's not his best goof-face, looks more like the end of one, because Ryan's head is tipped forward and he's laughing hard, his front teeth bright and nose wrinkled and eyes squinched closed; Brendon can't hold his goofy expressions for long in the face of Ryan laughing so joyously.

 

Spencer looks at them for a long time, then looks up at them sitting before him right now, and smiles even more widely. Just a couple of days ago, they'd been bitter and yelling, but right now Brendon's grinning fondly down at Ryan and trying to smooth over Ryan's hair while Ryan's cheeks pink a little and he leans his head back against Brendon's thigh, swallowing a sip of his coffee and watching Spencer intently.

 

"Do you see?" Ryan asks suddenly, and the dopey smile on Spencer's face slips into confusion.

 

"Um, see what?" he asks and looks back down at the photograph.

 

"You and _Jon_," Brendon says, like it's obvious, like it's some piece of a song that Spencer hasn't learned yet.

 

Spencer looks at the other half of the photograph, the part he'd only glanced over in favor of the glee coming off the print from Ryan and Brendon. He looks at Jon and himself, and--

 

The Pacific Ocean is glittering behind them, and the sand is fine and almost white beneath their bodies sprawled out next to each other. Neither of them is wearing a shirt and Spencer's chest is already a little red, but Jon has a faint tan across his own. Their bare shoulders are pressed up close together where they're propped up on their elbows for Shane to take their picture. Except right before Shane took it, Jon had said something funny (something probably not even that funny, Spencer thinks, lame even, certainly unmemorable) and whatever it was, it made Spencer laugh. He's tilting his head toward Jon's shoulder, hair and beard golden in the summer sun and teeth even brighter than Ryan's, his whole face alive, whole body leaning into Jon's. And Jon's face is turned toward his, positively beaming. Jon's hand is on top of his on the sand. Jon's looking at him like he could watch Spencer laugh all day and be perfectly content with it.

 

Brendon coughs pointedly.

 

Spencer looks up at him and Ryan.

 

"Oh." He turns back to the photograph. "Um."

 

"I mean," Ryan says quietly, after a moment of only Brendon's fingers tap-tapping on the armrest, and Spencer looks back up at him. "It's ridiculous, right? That a photo can tell you something like that? But--"

 

"--at the same time, it's sort of awesome, yeah?" Brendon finishes, smiling hopefully.

 

"We think it's about damn time," Ryan says slowly, "that you guys just go for it."

 

Spencer wants to say, _And what the hell about you two? Is something finally going on there?_ but at that moment, there's a knock at the door.

 

And it's Jon's usual _thunk-thunk-thunkthunk-thunk._

 

Brendon and Ryan exchange wide-eyed looks, and Spencer scrambles up off the floor to shove the framed photograph into his suitcase.

 

He exhales a long breath (which absolutely does not shake, okay?) and opens the door.

 

"I brought us your favorites: cinnamon rolls and black coffee," Jon greets him, smiling and carefully holding up a lumpy white paper bag.

 

Spencer immediately relaxes. "Oh man, did you get them from that one bakery with the--"

 

Jon's nodding, "Backwards clock and best giant cinnamon rolls ever? Yup."

 

"Shit, I've _missed_ that place. It's been way too long since we've toured here." Suddenly realizing how hungry he is, Spencer grabs the bag from Jon and hurries over to the small table by the window to set down the bag and dig in.

 

"Yeah, when I woke up, Ryan was gone, so I figured maybe he and Brendon already went out to get breakfast somewhere?" Jon's talking way faster than normal as he leans over to pick up the morning newspaper by the door. "But listen, Spence, I'm glad you're here, I--" Jon steps into the room and stops.

 

"Morning, Jon!" Brendon holds up Spencer's abandoned cup of coffee he's stolen and tips it as if to say, _Cheers!_

 

"Um, hey, guys, what's happening?" Jon looks weirdly disappointed, sort of like he did last night. Spencer bites into his (_oh my god still warm_) cinnamon roll and raises a questioning eyebrow at him, but Jon's not looking.

 

"Oh, we were just, um--" Brendon exchanges a look with Ryan, like he thinks they need a cover story in place of, _We were giving Spencer a gift to persuade him to jump your bones._

 

"--discussing all the things we're looking forward to getting to do once we all grow old and grey," Ryan pulls out of his ass.

 

"Yeah," Brendon nods, "you know, now that Spencer's thirty, it won't be long before we're all, like, seventy."

 

Jon laughs and looks a little less fidgety. "That's some logic, Bren." He walks over to the table to stand beside where Spencer's sitting, and when he reaches into the bag for the other cinnamon roll, his arm brushes Spencer's shoulder. "So, what're these things you guys are going to do once we're all old men?"

 

"Well, Brendon wants an elaborately designed walking cane," Ryan says, a hint of amusement in his tone.

 

"And it would have a sweet ass sword hidden inside!" Brendon announces. "Spence wants a sword-cane, too."

 

Spencer swallows another bite and smirks at him. "We could duel."

 

"Yes!" Brendon abruptly sits up straight and almost spills coffee on himself.

 

"I just want a rocking chair so I can comfortably watch you two look like complete idiots _and_ break your hips," Ryan says.

 

"You just want a rocking chair so you can be a grumpy old man in a house full of books and guitars," Brendon teases.

 

"But I'm sure you'll be there to liven things up by making bad puns about me still 'rocking' in my old age," Ryan says dryly.

 

Brendon cracks up, and starts saying something else, but Spencer's not listening anymore. He's too busy savoring his breakfast and too distracted by Jon standing next to him, sturdy and close; they're not even touching but Spencer can feel his body heat nonetheless. If he drifted his upper body just a fraction to the left, he would be resting against Jon's side.

 

"I could go for a monocle, d'you think?" Jon says to him after a moment of quietly eating with Brendon and Ryan continuing to make up shit in the background.

 

Spencer licks some icing off his lips and grins up at Jon. "You would make one classy old man with a monocle."

 

Jon's grinning down at him, and it seems like he's all back to normal: no more unexplained disappointment or uncharacteristic jittery spells. "It'll make me look extra classy when I'm old and living in a house filled with music and cats, and when you and me sit down to reminisce, I'll need some spectacles to see the liner notes clearly."

 

Spencer grins into his coffee and lets himself drift that extra inch so that his shoulder brushes against Jon's elbow. "Hey," he says, shifting away after a moment so that he can toss the paper bag into the trash bin. "You were being all," Spencer flutters his hand a little in front of him, "I don't know . . . weird. Before."

 

"Oh, I, uh." Jon stuffs a hand into his jeans pocket and turns back to his coffee. "I just needed to talk with you. Um, alone. But it-- later, okay?"

 

Spencer scrunches his eyebrows. "Um, okay."

 

Jon nods, but he's still not looking at Spencer. "Yeah. Later."

 

*

 

They've agreed to do a local radio interview later that afternoon -- some rush hour program on NPR -- and it's Jon and Brendon's turn for that torture, so Spencer and Ryan spend most of the day shopping for new clothes and pointedly not talking about anything significant whatsoever.

 

They don't all get back on the road until dusk, and by then Spencer's pretty much forgotten about that whole thing where Jon's been acting a little nervous and weird in the past twenty-four hours and had said he needs to talk with Spencer. Alone. And, well, Spencer doesn't know what Jon needs to say, but Spencer can't get that damn photograph out of his head, and he's thinking that maybe Brendon and Ryan were right: he needs to go for it.

 

Spencer just never thought he'd be in Iowa when It finally happened.

 

Not that he'd really thought about Iowa at all when he'd considered the possibility of It happening, but it's odd somehow now that he's here. On a random road in Iowa. Squeezed into his own bunk. With Jon. Trying to find a way to talk about It. On the night of his own thirtieth birthday.

 

"I don't know, I guess I just thought that I might not even make it to thirty," he's babbling to Jon. They're lying on their sides talking into the dim lighting between them. "I mean, not like I'm all that self-destructive, I just sort of figured our country and North Korea and Iran would've blown each other up by now, or that everybody would've completely destroyed the environment or something."

 

Jon considers him for a moment, half of his bottom lip sucked beneath his top front teeth. He reaches out and places the back of his hand against Spencer's forehead, shifting the bangs out of the way, as if checking for a fever.

 

"What are you doing?"

 

"Checking for symptoms of melancholy."

 

Spencer tries not to laugh. "Um, okay?"

 

"No fever. Can you feel your toes?"

 

"Yes, Jon," Spencer deadpans. "I can feel my toes."

 

"Have you been drinking red wine without me again? You know how sad and ridiculous that makes you."

 

"Jon." Spencer does laugh this time. "Stop it." He bats Jon's hand away, but Jon just lets it drop to the intersection of Spencer's neck and shoulder.

 

They lie there quietly for a moment.

 

"I really thought there'd be flying cars by now," Jon says all of a sudden.

 

"Huh?"

 

"Oh, I thought we were sharing what we thought would have happened by the time you hit thirty." Jon grins. "Flying cars."

 

Spencer rolls his eyes. "At least we have an electric bus."

 

"Sadly, it's no flying automobile."

 

"That it is not."

 

"Nope," Jon agrees sadly.

 

"Because we're not living in a futuristic sci-fi flick."

 

Jon grins and tilts his head to the side. "Guess we'll have to wait 'til 2020?"

 

"Nah, too soon. Maybe 2050?"

 

"You're no fun."

 

"That's me: thirty."

 

"Don't worry, Spence, you're still you." Jon hooks his ankle over Spencer's and drags their legs together.

 

Spencer's heart, maybe, trips a little in his chest at that and the way Jon's tongue curls soft and intimate around his name. The worn denim of their jeans drags up against their shins, soft hairy legs shifting against each other and the fleece blanket crumpled beneath them.

 

"Um." Spencer props himself up on his elbow. Jon's hand that's been on the side of his neck follows the movement and tangles a couple fingers into Spencer's hair; he's been growing it longer again, like he did when he was twenty. "Um," Spencer repeats and tries to meet Jon's eyes, then just blurts out, "Hey, so, did Ryan and Brendon show you the photograph they gave me for my birthday this morning?"

 

"No," Jon says slowly, drawing his eyebrows together in confusion. "Should they have?"

 

"Maybe?" Spencer closes his eyes and gets distracted by Jon's fingers twisting and untwisting sections of Spencer's hair against the back of his neck.

 

Jon laughs uncomfortably after a moment of silence. "Ah, care to elaborate?"

 

Spencer keeps his eyes closed and takes a deep breath. Jon hasn't stopped moving his fingers through Spencer's hair in soothing twists. Spencer exhales. "Brendon and Ryan think-- well, I mean, they say that the photo shows-- um." He opens his eyes to meet Jon's and lets out the rest as quickly as he can: "Areyouinlovewithme?"

 

The question comes out much more quietly and uncertain than he'd meant for it to sound. It's just-- photography can lie, right? (_You don't just have the photograph as proof, silly,_ a voice in his head reminds him; it sounds suspiciously like Brendon.)

 

Jon's eyes widen for a split second before he squeezes them shut, pulling his hand away from Spencer's hair and covering his own face.

 

Spencer's neck feels cold.

 

Jon mumbles something into his hand.

 

"I-- I didn't catch that." Spencer hesitantly reaches out and pulls Jon's hand away from his face. Their fingers automatically tangle together and drop to the mattress between them. Spencer can feel their pulses quickening against each other, heartbeats in their fingertips.

 

Jon opens one eye and looks at Spencer's. "I might be? Just a lit--" He cuts himself off and squeezes his eyes shut again for a moment, then opens them both and looks straight at Spencer, terrified. "I am, a lot. Yes."

 

Spencer feels light-headed all of a sudden; it's a good thing he's already lying down. He clutches Jon's fingers a little more desperately. "How long?"

 

Jon glances down at their fingers. "Since, um. Since . . . Wisconsin?"

 

Spencer scrunches his eyebrows. "Wait, you mean, like, a few days ago?"

 

Jon laughs, one of those laughs that's not amused at all. "I mean since our _first_ Wisconsin."

 

"Since-- oh god, Jon--"

 

"I figured it out on our first tour with me, you know, officially in the band." He stares somewhere in the vicinity of Spencer's chin for a moment before adding, "You and me stayed up all night together after the show and we were completely _sober_ and just, like, cracking each other up and _talking_ and stuff, and I just-- you were-- I dare anyone _not_ to fall for you when you laugh, Spence, seriously."

 

"You--" Spencer swallows. Okay, wow, he might just throw up. This voice in the back of his mind keeps telling him that this doesn't actually come as a surprise, like he and Jon have always been progressing toward something like this moment, but the rest of him is fucking _blind-sided_.

 

"It's sort of not-really funny that you brought it up actually," Jon says miserably, staring at their folded fingers again.

 

"Um, how could this be funny?"

 

Jon frowns even more. "I was going to ask you. For your birthday, that was my . . . well, my present? I guess?"

 

Spencer blinks a few times but keeps his gaze on Jon's down-turned eyelashes. "Ask me _what_?"

 

"If you might possibly want to--" Jon exhales a frustrated laugh and rolls his eyes upward. "I totally had this planned out better. Nothing's coming out right. It-- this was a dumb idea." He rolls his eyes back toward Spencer's and half-smiles at him sadly.

 

"Hey, don't-- just--" Spencer laughs, beginning to feel a little giddy all of a sudden, because this is _really happening_, and Jon-- he knows how Spencer feels, doesn't he? "Ask me, Jon."

 

Jon untangles their fingers, slides their palms together and holds on even more tightly, knuckles puzzled together. He doesn't take his eyes away from Spencer's this time. "Do you want to-- I want _us_, Spence."

 

"I--" Spencer clears his throat, but his voice shakes a tiny bit anyhow. "Why _now_?"

 

"We're old," Jon says, and Spencer can't actually tell if he's joking or not. "There's no more time to waste."

 

Spencer cracks a smile. "You were just telling me the other day that we're _not_ old."

 

"Yeah. Well . . ." Jon shrugs one shoulder and sinks his teeth into his bottom lip, averting his eyes again. "I'm just _tired_, Spence. I'm too tired not to be with someone."

 

"With someone," Spencer repeats.

 

"With you," Jon says, his voice more determined all of a sudden and his eyes meeting Spencer's. "I'm tired of not being with _you_."

 

"With--" Spencer swears his chest is about to burst open. He can't really see clearly either, and he feels like an idiot who can't form proper sentences anymore. Wow, going through every cliché in the book, awesome. "You-- okay?"

 

Jon pulls his hand away from Spencer's, slides it across the small space between them, up the brief ticklish bulge of Spencer's stomach, and rests his broad palm around Spencer's hip. "I've been in love with you for a very long time." Jon's voice is quiet but it barely wavers, like he's certain of this one thing.

 

"But what about." Spencer stops and watches the hem of his own white t-shirt rumple and un-rumple as Jon's thumb swipes across his hip.

 

"What about what?"

 

"Cassie."

 

Jon is silent for a beat. "Where have you been for the past three years? Cassie and I split up. You know this, Spence."

 

"No. I mean-- I mean, yes, it's just--"

 

"A person can be in love with two people at the same time," Jon says fiercely, and nudges Spencer's chin with his thumb so they'll be face to face again.

 

Spencer swallows. "I know."

 

"Sure." Jon exhales a low, not-very-amused laugh, and averts his eyes again. "You know."

 

Spencer thinks about two years ago: the last time he woke up next to Haley, when the light in their house was the sort of golden morning that Spencer had only ever felt in Ryan's poetry.

 

He thinks about Panic's earliest post-Brent tours: waking up to Jon and Brendon singing Disney songs or Ryan and Jon creating melodies Spencer didn't know they were capable of.

 

He thinks of loving two people, in different ways, at the same time, but only one of them making sense with the third piece of his life he's in love with: his drums, his band, their music.

 

"Jon," Spencer says, realizing that apparently he _does_ need to confirm this for Jon. "I _know_."

 

Jon just blinks at him sadly, but after a beat, his eyes widen on an, "_Oh._ Y-you do?"

 

Spencer nods and shifts his forehead forward, pressed warm and smooth against Jon's, their bangs meshing together. "Probably since you were still The Academy's tech, to be honest, but it took me a few years to figure out that I didn't just have a stupid crush on you or something."

 

Jon laughs, this relieved, euphoric sound. He tilts his forehead against Spencer's and just breathes for a moment, one of his hands combing through Spencer's hair, the other still resting on Spencer's hipbone.

 

Spencer tries to laugh in response, but his throat feels tight; he tries to match Jon's steady breaths instead, but ends up sounding a little panicked.

 

"Hey, shh," Jon murmurs, and then his lips are nudging Spencer's own. It's not really a kiss, more of an intimate, _Hi, you. Don't worry, I'm right here._ Which is sort of the entire reason Spencer's freaking out, so that doesn't help much.

 

Jon slides his hand out of Spencer's hair, down to the nape of his neck, and it's got to be an awkward angle for his wrist, but all Spencer can think is, _What if the reality isn't as good?_ He's wanted Jon for so long; what if he's built up this unrealistic ideal that Jon can't possibly live up to?

 

But then Jon kisses him, really kisses him this time.

 

Spencer's eyes are squeezed shut, worrying too much, so he completely misses any warning signs until Jon's mouth presses warm and soft, strong and wet against his own, and Spencer realizes how stupid it was to worry about the reality not feeling a hundred times better than he'd imagined. Jon's tongue traces a slow line along Spencer's lower lip, then lightly scrapes his teeth over the same path, and Spencer draws in a sharp breath and fits their mouths closer together. He slides his tongue against Jon's and lets out an embarrassing little sigh at the contact, at the ticklish heat and smooth push and pull.

 

Jon's fingernails dig into Spencer's skin, five little crescent pricks of pleasant pain around his hipbone.

 

"Jon," Spencer breathes into Jon's mouth, then keeps kissing him, deep and desperate, as he carefully tries to shift his body on top of Jon's without either of them injuring themselves by, like, falling out of the bunk.

 

After one more sloppy kiss, Spencer spreads his hands flat on either side of Jon's body and lets his knees slip to the outsides of Jon's thighs. "Jon," he repeats, and shifts his pelvis forward to find some friction between their half-hard cocks. They both inhale sharply, Spencer tipping his head back slightly as his jaw falls slack. Before he can regain some sense of composure, Jon licks a broad line up Spencer's throat and over his sensitive Adam's apple; Spencer's hips pulse forward, urging a long, low groan out of them both.

 

Biting his lip, Spencer looks down at Jon, at the flush in his skin and want in his eyes as he supports himself on his elbows and cranes his neck to kiss Spencer's chin, pull back and grin at him, one of his hands still holding tightly to Spencer's hip and the other tracing up and down his spine beneath the t-shirt. Spencer presses his knees into the mattress for balance as he wriggles out of the shirt and tosses it into the bottom corner of the bunk, knocking his head on the ceiling in the process.

 

"Ow, fuck," he mutters, rubbing at his scalp and glaring down at Jon as he bursts out laughing.

 

"Aw, Spence, c'mere," he says in the midst of his laughter, and wraps one large hand around the back of Spencer's neck, the other arm locked firmly around his lower back. Spencer's face relaxes into a sheepish smile at he sinks down willingly and lets Jon kiss him. "I promise we won't always have to do this in such a small space," Jon mumbles into Spencer's cheek as they break away from the kiss and Spencer leans his forehead against Jon's.

 

Spencer can't help but grin at that, Jon kissing the corner of his upturned lips, because, _holy shit_: He has Jon now. He tries to ignore the little acrobatic flips in behind his bellybutton at the thought that this is only the first time of many that he'll get to be with Jon like this.

 

Then he dips his head and kisses Jon's neck, wiggles down Jon's body, and begins to kiss his stomach, nosing his t-shirt out of the way. Jon exhales heavily and tugs off the shirt, and Spencer's lips press against hot skin, the smattering of hair beneath his bellybutton, while his hands tickle up and down Jon's ribs.

 

Jon shivers.

 

Reveling in this sort of control over how he gets to make Jon feel, Spencer hooks his fingers into the waistband of Jon's shorts.

 

Jon tilts his hips up, and Spencer watches the reveal of his cock as he tugs the shorts down. There's a brief commotion as Jon kicks the shorts off his legs and they try to situate their bodies in the small space, until they end up with Jon spreading his legs a little wider and Spencer settling on his knees between them.

 

He leans forward to taste Jon, but as soon as Jon's half-hard cock comes within a couple inches of Spencer's mouth, Spencer stops and starts silently panicking again: What if he's awful at this? What if he and Jon realize they're not sexually compatible at all? His years-long relationship with Haley was certainly not without breaks and slip-ups, times when they'd both been separated and spent time with other people. So, Spencer has had a few, mostly-drunk encounters with men and women, but they only ever used hands. He never even kissed any of them, much less went down on them, so the fact remains: He's never done this with a dude before now.

 

After several seconds of just staring down at Jon's cock and silently having a little freak-out, Jon wriggles his hips uncomfortably, and Spencer realizes he's been breathing against his cock, hot and panicky. He watches Jon's cock twitch a little, and his stomach drops. He swallows. Okay, fuck whether or not he's going to be good at this; he is _ready_ for it.

 

Spencer wraps his hand around the base of Jon's cock and gives him a few firm, even pulls, feeling him grow harder in the space between his palm and fingers. He's a little shorter than Spencer's hand is used to holding, but even thicker. Spencer tilts his head and slides his lips down one side of the shaft, outlining Jon's cock with his pursed lips, then curls his tongue between where his fingers are still gripping the base and glides the tip of his tongue up the vein on the underside of Jon's cock. He's not really freaked out anymore -- or turned-on, for that matter. He's just determined to make this good for Jon.

 

Well, until his tongue reaches the head of Jon's cock and he swipes the flat of his tongue across the velvet-smooth skin, because all of a sudden Jon's hands are fisting in Spencer's hair and he's moaning a string of "pleasepleaseSpencerplease" that makes Spencer's own cock harden instantly in his boxers.

 

He wraps his lips around the head and sucks once.

 

Jon groans a long, low ragged sound that Spencer wasn't sure either of them was capable of making. It might be the best thing Spencer has heard in bed, like, _ever_.

 

He sucks harder.

 

When he begins to lower his mouth farther down, the only things he can process through the power trip of making Jon sound like that, are little reminders to himself about covering his teeth and continuing to breathe through his nose, and then before he realizes it, there's the feeling of Jon's cock bumping against the roof of his mouth, at the entrance to his throat. Spencer inhales through his nose more deeply, because all he can process _now_ is how full he feels and how his jaw is already aching a little, but then he swipes his tongue just below the head, and Jon digs his nails into his scalp and says Spencer's name in this breathless way that turns the last syllable into almost a whimper.

 

Spencer bobs his head up and down a few times, just to get Jon more worked up, and then pulls off with a startlingly obscene _pop_ that makes Jon dig his nails into Spencer's shoulder and actually whimper Spencer's name again. Spencer grins up at him, at the way Jon's head is thrown back against the pillow, his mouth open and chest rising and falling rapidly. All of a sudden, as much as Spencer's jaw is aching, his mouth feels just as empty as he'd felt full a moment ago.

 

So, he fists the base of Jon's cock, dips his head, and starts sucking on the head again, shallow pulls until he grows used to the size, then he dips a little bit lower till the head is bumping the roof of his mouth again, like a reassuring presence that Spencer can't get enough of. He picks up a counter-rhythm between his mouth and his hand and his tongue, all the while using his other hand to hold down one of Jon's hips.

 

Soon, too soon, he feels Jon yank insistently on his hair, but Spencer himself is sort of gone by now, so he just sucks harder, weirdly enjoying the heavy weight on his jaw and the slight trembling of Jon's body beneath his hands and the deep sound of Jon panting above him and-- _oh_.

 

It not even until Jon's cock jerks inside his mouth and the first spurt of come pools on his tongue that Spencer realizes why Jon was trying to pull him off.

 

He quickly pulls away, so the rest of it lands on Jon's belly, his chest. Spencer licks his lips and tastes the sharp, bitter tang of him. He doesn't really like it, but he doesn't not like it either. It's _Jon_, a part of Jon, who's pulling on Spencer's hair until he slides back up Jon's body, enjoying the sweat-and-come slip of their skin, hot at every point of contact, chests rising and falling out of synch against one another.

 

When Spencer's face reaches Jon's again, they just blink at each other for a second. Jon's hand is still fisted in Spencer's hair at the back of his head, and Spencer's mouth is starting to taste increasingly more unpleasant, but then Jon's hand urges Spencer's head forward, and Jon starts licking into his mouth, so Spencer thinks that if Jon doesn't mind the taste then maybe not pulling off right away hadn't been such a bad idea after all.

 

Ideas don't really exist in Spencer's brain for a while after that. Barely a few seconds after Jon starts kissing him, he's pushing Spencer against the wall, awkwardly trying to reverse their positions on this damn mattress that's only meant for one person. Spencer can't help but laugh a little as his back hits the wall and he tries to turn face-up onto the mattress at the same time Jon clumsily tries to roll on top of him. Granted, it might be easier to change positions if they weren't trying to continue kissing the entire time, laughing each time their mouths part, as their legs tangle together and Jon knocks his head on the ceiling a couple times, laughing even more each time.

 

Eventually, they settle, mouths spreading into momentary smiles against each other. Spencer enjoys having Jon on top of him more than he can process right now: this solid, warm weight stretched the length of his body as Jon cups one hand around his jaw and kisses him, delicate all of a sudden. Spencer curls his tongue against Jon's upper lip, unfurls it into his mouth, and grinds his hips up against Jon's when Jon moans around his tongue.

 

Pulling away from his mouth, Jon starts kissing down his body -- a nip at his jaw, hot drags of his tongue across Spencer's nipples, a feathery tickle to his ribs -- until his face is level with Spencer's crotch.

 

Jon lifts the waistband of Spencer's boxers, and touches the tip of his tongue to the smooth head of Spencer's cock that pokes out. He's been hard for a while now, heavy and beginning to leak against his belly, and he would totally be embarrassed if they hadn't waited _eleven goddamn years_ to do this and if Jon's orgasm hadn't been so fucking hot and--

 

Spencer hisses through his teeth as Jon eases off Spencer's boxers, licking an easy stripe down the center of his cock as he moves lower, lower to the base. He slowly suctions his lips around one of Spencer's balls, then the other, and nuzzles the bristles of his beard against Spencer's inner thighs. Spencer's cock twitches, and Jon drags the flat topside of his tongue back up, up, curves around the base of the head, spirals up into the slit, then suctions his lips around the head, drops his jaw and lowers his mouth around it.

 

Spencer's moan surprises him as it vibrates through his chest, but Jon just keeps lowering his mouth, his tongue making precise swipes and tickles as he moves.

 

By the time Jon lowers his mouth down a quarter of the way, with just the right amount of pressure, Spencer is squirming against the mattress, one fist clutching a bunch of Jon's bangs and the other fisted in his own mouth, trying to keep himself from moaning too loudly again. Sure, Brendon and Ryan are watching a movie way too loudly in the back lounge (he can hear Jim Carrey make a bad joke and randomly thinks, okay, that is not what I want to hear when Jon makes me come), but even though that might be drowning out any noises they make, Spencer is aware that he and Jon are not exactly in an entirely private space right now.

 

He sort of forgets that when Jon, clenching and unclenching his hands against Spencer's sides, suddenly tugs Spencer toward him, shifting Spencer's entire body a couple inches down the bunk so that the angle changes inside Jon's mouth.

 

"Oh, _fuck_," Spencer groans loudly, and the fist that had been in his mouth thunks sideways against the wall. He feels the vibrations of Jon moaning as he starts to suck a little harder, bobbing his head a little more quickly. Jon takes one hand off Spencer's ribs and reaches for Spencer's balls, stretches them and lets them tighten again, cups them and just holds them there, stroking his thumb in little circles.

 

He's getting a little sloppier with his mouth's rhythm on Spencer's cock, and it takes Spencer a moment to realize that's because Jon's taken his other hand away from Spencer in order to touch himself, the slapping sound of Jon's hand around his own cock, wet with pre-come, loud in the muffled space of the bunk. Spencer cranes his neck upward, because he needs to see this: Jon is propped on his knees, cock already hard again between his rapidly blurring fist, while his back slopes downward and his lips stretch around Spencer, his cheeks hollowed out with each deeper pull, and for a second Spencer can see the outline of his own cock bump against the inside of Jon's cheek, see Jon's eyelashes flutter a little as it happens.

 

Then Spencer's gone, he's coming harder than he can remember coming in way too long, and Jon just swallows, urging him right on through it all. Spencer makes a weird gargling sound that slides into a groan as he presses one palm flat against the bunk-ceiling and the other hand blindly pulls on Jon's hair. A second later, Jon moans around his cock and comes onto Spencer's shins, his ankles, probably leaving stains on the cotton blanket that's been bunched up beneath them.

 

Jon lifts his mouth from Spencer's softening cock, swiping his tongue over the head one last time, before he drops his forehead against against Spencer's thigh, below where it meets his hip. Spencer can feel Jon give his own cock one last pull, his knuckles pausing against Spencer's ankle, and then Jon's body relaxes, halfway on Spencer's lower body, halfway on the mattress. He inhales shakily; exhales one long, warm breath into a kiss on the too-hot skin of Spencer's hip.

 

Well, Spencer thinks, either Jon has a little bit more experience with dudes than Spencer realized, or Jon is just freakishly talented on the first try. Huh.

 

They both just lie there in silence for a couple minutes, catching their breaths and enjoying the relaxed afterglow. Spencer loosens the fist that's been clutching at Jon's hair and starts combing his fingers through the damp waves. Jon shivers a little when Spencer scrapes his nails over the back of his neck, then he gently butts his forehead against Spencer's arm and starts pressing light kisses up Spencer's body, until they're face to face again.

 

Slowly, so that his head doesn't bang against the ceiling yet again, Jon props himself up on his knees with one hand flat on the pillow beside Spencer's head and the other curled around Spencer's jaw.

 

"Hi," Jon says, face relaxed and flushed and content. His grin is possibly the sexiest thing Spencer has ever seen.

 

"Hey," Spencer whispers, and his lips feel swollen and used, but when he mirrors Jon's grin, it feels so easy and right that he wants to make sure he can feel this, like, _all the time always_.

 

"C'mon, let's go clean up a little and _then_ decide if we want to pass out or go again," Jon teases when Spencer turns his head to kiss Jon's palm. He leans down to give Spencer a quick peck on the lips before shrugging himself off Spencer in order to untangle his shorts from the mess of clothing and bedding around their legs. Spencer props himself up on his elbows to watch, smirking as Jon finds the shorts and awkwardly shimmies into them.

 

"Here," Jon says, tossing Spencer's boxers at his face.

 

Spencer laughs and drops his face back into the pillow, but they just land on his head anyway.

 

Jon laughs, too, as he opens the curtain and rolls out of the bunk. Spencer's body already misses his warmth, and he doesn't even care how ridiculous that might be, he really doesn't.

 

Spencer quickly pulls on his boxers and swings his legs over the side of the bottom bunk. Jon's standing there, beaming down at him. Spencer smirks back up at him and slides his hands up the backs of Jon's shorts, curling his fingers around the muscles and smooth little golden-brown hairs of Jon's thighs.

 

Jon bites his lip and tugs playfully on Spencer's hair. "Clean first," he says, but leans a little into Spencer's hands anyway, before Spencer lets go and stands up, grabbing ahold of Jon's hand instead while they shuffle over to the tiny bus bathroom.

 

They let go so they can brush their teeth and run a warm washcloth beneath their boxers and over their abdomens and the stains on Spencer's legs.

 

Jon laughs at Spencer's beard burn, as Spencer stares at it in the mirror and rubs a hand over the stinging pink marks across his face. He silently debates whether he should grow back his own beard, or keep his face smooth and ready for the proof that he and Jon are actually doing this.

 

He has time to decide.

 

They move on to making fun of each other's sex hair, playfully bumping hips and vying for space beneath the running faucet while they wash their hands, until Jon says, "Hey, look what Brendon taught me the other day."

 

He forms an 'O' with one hand, scrubs way more soap than necessary across the opening, and then brings it to his mouth and blows an oblong bubble out the other end. It pops against the mirror, and he turns to grin, wide and happy, at Spencer.

 

"Jon," Spencer laughs, his name coming out as a couple of chuckling syllables as Spencer wraps one arm around Jon's neck and the other around his waist and pulls him closer. "Fuck, I love you."

 

It comes out on accident, actually, a little breathlessly in the midst of his laughter. He says it into the curls behind Jon's ear, so intimate and easy it could only be the truth.

 

Jon jerks his head backward so he can watch Spencer's face, his eyes wide and happier than Spencer's seen in a long time. Spencer's laughter's trailed off, but he smiles hard when Jon's hands come up to frame his throat, one hand still bubbly wet.

 

All of a sudden, Jon's mouth is on his again, his hands sliding down and around Spencer's body, trying to touch him everywhere above the waist at once, and Spencer holds on tight, kissing back with just as much enthusiasm.

 

"Love you, love you," Jon's murmuring between each kiss, "love you."

 

Spencer doesn't really want to wear out the words, so he dips his tongue between Jon's lips and they start making out in earnest, tasting toothpaste and that slight lingering bitterness, and Spencer thinks, okay, now _this_ I don't want to ever stop.

 

A few minutes later, somebody bangs on the bathroom door.

 

"Hang on!" Jon calls at the same time Spencer shouts, "Fuck off!"

 

Brendon _whoops_ loudly on the other side of the door. "Oh my god, you two finally did it, didn't you?" He pauses for a beat and, busy tracing his tongue along Jon's jawbone, Spencer hopes that their silence will be answer enough.

 

"Didn't you?" Brendon repeats.

 

Spencer reluctantly lets go of Jon and turns to open the door, only enough to show half of his body. He glares at Brendon, thinking the effect should be enough even with only half of his face showing, except Brendon's looking past Spencer, and when Spencer turns it's to see that Jon is offering Brendon a thumbs up and rinsing off the soap from his other hand.

 

"Yes! I knew it!" Spencer barely registers Brendon pumping his fist in the air; he's too busy fighting back a smile and trying to hide his blush against the side of the door.

 

Jon comes up behind him, pressing his body flush with Spencer's, and Spencer's back muscles immediately relax against Jon's torso, all soft and solid, familiar and unfamiliar. Jon's hand starts petting up and down the line of hair below Spencer's bellybutton, over the soft curve of Spencer's belly, and when Spencer breathes in sharp, his stomach muscles tensing away from the touch, Jon murmurs a simple, "Hey," kisses the shell of his ear, and keeps petting up and down and in little circles, like he has some weird fascination with Spencer's belly or something. Spencer relaxes into each touch, even when Brendon starts spreading the news.

 

"They finally did it!" Brendon shouts back to Ryan, who's presumably still in the back lounge.

 

"I don't need to tell you guys not to let it fuck up the band!" Ryan calls back.

 

"He's going to tell us anyways," Spencer mutters, taking his face out of hiding, and Brendon rolls his eyes, grinning at him. Jon chuckles, his body vibrating a little against Spencer's back.

 

"But if you let this fuck up the band, I will never forgive you!" Ryan says, his voice growing louder as he approaches them. He stops behind Brendon, and betraying the warning tone in his voice, Ryan is smiling, sort of goofily large like he can't help it. Spencer feels his own face match that brightness.

 

"Dude," Brendon says, taking a step back to nudge Ryan with his elbow, "told you they'd finally do it."

 

"It's not like I argued," Ryan says, rolling his eyes.

 

Obviously getting impatient with the situation, Jon licks a short stripe up the back of Spencer's neck; kisses the knob at the base; slowly lowers his hand on Spencer's abdomen beneath the elastic waistband.

 

Spencer feels his cock twitch back to interest.

 

Something must show on his face because, a moment later, Brendon exclaims, "Hey, wait! No sex in the bathroom! Don't we have bus rules against that?"

 

"Whatever, it's more private than the bunks," Ryan points out, and begins dragging Brendon back to the lounge by the elbow. "They have, like, over a decade's worth of sexual tension to resolve. Leave 'em be for a while."

 

Spencer pushes the door shut and rests his forehead against it, arching his hips back into Jon's, feeling them both growing harder; Jon's cock is beginning to nudge into the crease of Spencer's ass, although the stupid cotton of their boxers is in the way.

 

"I think there's at least one condom in the cabinet over here," Jon murmurs into Spencer's ear, his voice not quite even.

 

"I think," Spencer says, turning around in Jon's arms, "_fuck_ the condoms right now and just--"

 

He tangles his fingers in the wavy hair at the back of Jon's head and yanks him forward, their mouths colliding at the same force as their bodies, Jon catching Spencer's body between his own and the door.

 

Jon wedges one thigh between Spencer's, and at the pressure on his cock, Spencer grunts into their kiss, the rough noise morphing into a long, low moan as Jon slides his tongue just right along Spencer's and begins shifting his hips in tiny circles against him. Spencer runs a hand down the slope of Jon's lower back and lower, hooks a thumb on the waistband of his boxers and ineffectually tries to pull them down. Jon gets the idea though and pulls away to shove down both pairs of their boxers. He continues to lick a long winding line down Spencer's chest, twisting around one nipple, as he bends enough to make sure their clothing is out of the way, the fabric bunched together at their feet.

 

On his way back to Spencer's mouth, the flat of Jon's tongue traces a wide line along Spencer's clavicle, making him shiver as he grabs Jon's jaw with both hands and urgently presses their mouths together again. It doesn't feel like he could ever get tired of kissing Jon, with his fingers pressing into the notches of Spencer's spine, the calluses tickling and making Spencer dig his own nails into Jon's shoulder and hip. Their cocks are hardening even more against their soft bellies, and Spencer pulls away from Jon's mouth to look down at the heads of their cocks, pink and shiny, and the shafts sliding dry alongside each other with every twist of their hips.

 

Swallowing a moan, Spencer looks back up to see Jon lick his own hand, sucking each finger wet, before he wraps his hand around Spencer's cock and pumps his fist up and down a few times, swirling his thumb around the head to catch the pre-come and slick it over the shaft. Spencer quickly kisses him, biting Jon's bottom lip as he pulls away to watch Jon's hand on his cock, his wrist beginning to find a rhythm.

 

Spencer slips his own hand down between them and wraps it around Jon's cock. He grins at the sound of Jon inhaling through his teeth, the sound sharp and quickly followed by Jon's warm breath against his mouth. Pumping his fist around Jon's cock, Spencer watches as Jon pauses his own rhythm to slide his hand off Spencer's cock and lower: his palm presses against Spencer's balls as his fingers reach farther back, and his middle finger -- so thick, oh _fuck_ \-- reaches Spencer's ass. Spencer's cock twitches against his belly. The pressure of Jon's wet fingertip sinking into him to the first knuckle is just enough to suggest a stretch without bordering too much on painful, and Spencer forgets for a moment about his own hand on Jon's cock, as Jon bends to graze his teeth over the sensitive skin of Spencer's collarbone, biting a mark into the knot of tension where collarbone meets shoulder.

 

"Fuck," Spencer gasps, or at least that's what he thought he was trying to say, but it comes out more like, "Fnngggh," as his knees buckle and he slides down the door a couple inches, digging his nails into Jon's shoulderblades to hold himself upright. Jon grabs onto one of his hips while Spencer begins to wriggle them, hoping to feel more of Jon's finger, wanting so much more of that stretch: the burn and _yes_ of the rough pads of Jon's fingers thick and solid inside of him.

 

Except, right now, Jon just crooks his finger a tiny bit more, adding more pressure to Spencer's balls against his palm, before he slides his finger out and wraps his hand back around Spencer's cock. Jon swipes his thumb across the slit, before he finds another rhythm that has Spencer panting against his mouth within seconds.

 

Spencer shudders as Jon hums happily against his lips and thrusts his cock up into Spencer's fist, a reminder that's followed by a murmured, "Please," into the corner of Spencer's lips, and Spencer fits their mouths back together, picks up a rhythm around Jon's cock again. Jon's own hand stutters for a second around Spencer's, but soon they both find a matching rhythm.

 

As thrilled as Spencer is to finally have Jon touching him like this, Spencer's beginning to realize how much he enjoys the feeling of Jon's cock in his hand, smooth and solid and increasingly more familiar. He likes the weight and heat of it filling the too-empty space that his hands usually close on; likes the friction his hand can create with slick momentum, the sounds he can provoke from Jon. He loves the feeling of the heads of their cocks bumping together, their knuckles knocking against each other, rough and off-rhythm, as Jon speeds up his own pulls on Spencer's cock.

 

They try to keep kissing for a while -- heavy, deep tastes of each other -- but about the third time they knock teeth or one of them bites the other's tongue because of the unpredictable spasms of their bodies, they end up pulling apart, laughing breathlessly. Jon hooks his chin over Spencer's shoulder and Spencer lets his head fall back against the door.

 

"So much," Spencer pants into the stuffy air, barely even hearing his own words over the wet friction of their hands and Jon's heavy breathing near his ear.

 

"So much what?" Jon asks, raising his mouth to Spencer's again, their lips swollen by now, and even more sensitive.

 

"Love you so much," Spencer says in one quick exhale, and opens his eyes to Jon already staring back at him. "I love--"

 

His breath catches as Jon's body jerks against his, as Jon comes onto Spencer's chest, squeezing his eyes shut and just melting into Spencer, vibrating with the force of it. His mouth lands on Spencer's jaw, and he opens it to press sloppy kisses against the raw skin there, before biting gently. His hand twists on Spencer's cock once more, tightening as Spencer thrusts up into it, and now he's coming too, his come mixing with Jon's across both of their chests.

 

"Me, too," Jon replies, resting their foreheads together. "So. Much," he adds, enunciating the two words, slow and clear, and it sounds like a promise.

 

Spencer catches Jon's sticky hand with his own and links their pinkies together, hands curled at their hips and lips pressed softly together.

 

*

 

"Why, hello there, St. Louis," Ryan says, shielding his eyes from the bright stage-lights in an unsuccessful attempt to see the audience better.

 

"Who are we tonight, Ry?" Brendon says into the mic, then takes a sip from his water bottle and begins to wander over to Ryan's side of the stage.

 

"Well, Brendon," Ryan drawls, his lips curling into a small smile, "tonight, I think we're just the same old Panic at the Disco."

 

Spencer taps out a _ba-dum-bum_ on the drums and exchanges a grin with Jon.

 

Brendon ducks his head and coughs into his shoulder.

 

"You heard the man, folks," he announces when he reaches Ryan's microphone, and even though Spencer can't see his face, he can tell from the tone of his voice that Brendon's beaming as the crowd's cheers rise up to meet the four of them.

 

"Hell _yeah_, we're Panic at the Disco," Jon repeats, still grinning and only turning halfway toward his mic so that he's still looking at Spencer, "and three of us were wondering if you'd let us indulge in an embarrassing birthday song before we get into our actual set."

 

The crowd cheers obediently again, and Spencer can hear a few scattered, "I love you, Spencerrr!" screeches from voices way younger than he'd like to consider.

 

Brendon slings an arm around Ryan's shoulder and leans into the mic. "Our dear friend and drummer celebrated his thirtieth--"

 

"Count 'em," Ryan talks over him.

 

"--birthday yesterday!"

 

"Spencer Smith, everybody!" Jon announces, and the crowd cheers even more loudly, still heavily weighted by feminine teenage cries, regardless of the increased percentage of dude fans or number of fans who have grown up with the band.

 

Brendon squeezes Ryan's shoulder, then bounds over to the upright piano at the side of the stage and slides onto the bench. He tosses a small bongo drum over to Ryan, who catches it and then perches on the edge of the bench beside Brendon.

 

Spencer has the fleeting, horrible realization that they're going to sing "Happy Birthday" to him, before he hears tambourine jangling from Jon's mic, and then all three of them start to sing a familiar, ridiculous version of a birthday song.

 

"Spencer, it's your birthday! Happy birthday, Spencer!" they sing, and Spencer bursts out laughing, because it's totally to the tune of that old _Simpsons_ episode, in which Bart and that pseudo-Michael Jackson character make up a birthday song for Lisa; he probably wouldn't even remember the episode if he hadn't been watching it with Brendon, like, last week.

 

It's the corniest thing they've done on stage in a long time, and they _know_ it, and that's probably what makes Spencer laugh even harder, giddy with the feeling of still being the four of them: together and just as ridiculous as always.

 

Brendon continues the song, tapping out sentimental piano chords, "I wish you better than your heart desires--"

 

"--and your first kiss from a boy," Ryan sings, dry and pointed, and Brendon sticks out his tongue at Spencer. Ryan grins and keeps a steady, upbeat rhythm on the drum wedged between his knees, his upper back resting casually against Brendon's shoulder as he leans into the microphone.

 

Still laughing, Spencer looks over to Jon's side where he's jingle-jangling the tambourine in circles and looking right at Spencer. When Spencer catches his eye, he ambles over to Spencer's drum kit platform, climbs up onto it and grins down at Spencer.

 

Spencer tries to glare, but his laughter won't let him hold a straight face. "I hate you," he tries anyway.

 

"You do not," Jon says, grinning even more widely; Spencer can read his lips more than he can actually hear the words over the sound of Brendon and Ryan's song; he thinks they're just making up random shit now, interspersed with "Happy birthday"s.

 

Jon leans over one of the toms and cymbals so that he can place the tambourine atop Spencer's head like some stupid birthday crown. One of his hands slips down into Spencer's hair as he pulls back, his fingers smoothing the hair back and lingering for a moment at the shell of his ear.

 

"You love me," Jon half-teases, voice a little more audible this close up, and Spencer's not laughing anymore, except he can't help but smile so hard his face hurts.

 

Ryan and Brendon bang out a finale of noise on their respective instruments, before Brendon announces, "Happy birthday! We are all officially old!" and Spencer can hear Ryan's laughter trail away from the microphone as he stands up and returns to his guitar.

 

Spencer turns from Jon and watches as Brendon bounces up to follow Ryan, grabbing one of his guitars from a stand at the foot of Spencer's drum kit. "Dude, what should we start with?" Brendon asks into Ryan's mic as he sidles up next to him.

 

There's a smattering of applause and shouted song titles from the audience.

 

"I'm feeling like an old one," Ryan says and strums a quick, distantly familiar rhythm on his guitar, "from back in the day."

 

Spencer turns back to Jon and they grin impossibly more widely at each other. Spencer takes the tambourine off his head and jangles it for a second at his side, before dropping it, and Jon winks and hops down from the platform, back to his own mic.

 

"Okay, here we go, Missouri!" Brendon spreads his arms and lets one drop back across Ryan's shoulders for a moment, before his fingers return to his own guitar.

 

"Way back to our second album," Ryan announces.

 

And they all throw themselves into their old song about change, cathartic in its exuberance.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA September 2011: Now with a wonderful Jon/Spencer coda [No Other Place to Be](http://witheveryspark.livejournal.com/27640.html) written by [thismuchmore](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thismuchmore/pseuds/thismuchmore) and a Brendon/Ryan sequel [We Are All Going Forward (None of Us Are Going Back)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/254536) written by myself. ♥
> 
> you can find me on the tumblr over [here](http://dalek-in-heels.tumblr.com/)


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